Tesla Opens Cybercab Pre-Orders for Personal Use at US$29,990 Plus Monthly Fee

AUSTIN, Texas, November 14, 2026 — Tesla has begun inviting “select customers” to pre-order its two-seater Cybercab “for personal use”, the company said on Friday evening, at a price of US$29,990 plus a mandatory monthly fee to operate the vehicle, as reported by TechCrunch.

The Cybercab has no steering wheel or pedals. It is designed to drive itself, so owners cannot simply take over if the software is switched off. According to TechCrunch and The Verge, buyers must also pay US$299 a month for what Tesla calls an Autonomy Subscription, without which the car cannot be used on public roads. Electrek, which reviewed the order page, said the subscription is required for operation and that one month is included. A US$1,000 non-refundable deposit is needed to place an order, The Verge and Electrek reported, with estimated delivery in December 2026.

The fine print is tighter still. The vehicle will only work inside the same geofenced areas where Tesla already runs its Robotaxi service. Tech reviewer Marques Brownlee, cited by TechCrunch, posted that buyers must accept delivery in one of a handful of Texas cities. Electrek and The Verge report that the Robotaxi service currently operates in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth and San Antonio in Texas, and in Miami, Orlando and Tampa in Florida. Tesla’s head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, said the Cybercab will work “unsupervised inside all the same geo locations as @robotaxi, just serving the owners’ needs.”

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, responding to Brownlee on X, said the Cybercab “will be available nationwide, as we receive regulatory approval.” He also said the monthly fee is “too high” and “should match the cost of Tesla [Full Self-Driving] and connectivity for other models, which is more like ~$115/month.”

The Verge reported another restriction in the order terms: early buyers are not allowed to use the vehicle for commercial purposes, including putting it on Tesla’s own Robotaxi network, so they cannot yet offset the monthly fee by earning fares. The publication said Mr Elluswamy has floated the second quarter of 2027 as a possible point at which customer-owned cars might join that network. Tesla has not formally confirmed a date.

The offer was announced on Tesla’s Robotaxi account on X, with screenshots of the invitation email and the order page. It is not a general public sale: only selected customers are being invited, and Tesla has not said when, or whether, orders will open more widely. Engadget noted that the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has already opened an audit of how Tesla certified the Cybercab for the road, given the absence of conventional manual controls.

Tesla has been shifting factory capacity towards the Cybercab as it prepares to wind down Cybertruck production. As Life News Agency reported this week, Mr Musk has said Cybertruck production at the Texas factory will now run through the end of summer 2027, later than the mid-2027 wind-down he first sketched, to work through more of the backlog.

What to watch next is whether Tesla lowers that monthly fee, as Mr Musk suggested, how quickly regulatory approval extends beyond today’s service areas, and whether personal Cybercabs are eventually allowed onto the Robotaxi network — or remain, for some time, a vehicle that only works in a handful of cities and only while the subscription is paid.

Sources: TechCrunch, The Verge, Electrek and Engadget. Original post: https://x.com/TechCrunch/status/2121695940310425747.

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