Tesla’s Cybercab has no steering wheel, no pedals and no rearview mirrors. And Tesla is putting more of them on the road.
Texas records show 573 Cybercabs among the 1,080 vehicles registered for Tesla’s robotaxi service in the state, more than the 507 Model Ys, Drive Tesla Canada reported on October 28. Registered doesn’t necessarily mean in service, but the outlet says hundreds appeared to be in use during the Formula 1 weekend in Austin.
On Tesla’s October 21 earnings call, Elon Musk said:
Tesla says Cybercab service in Dallas is set to start in November. Musk said robotaxis are “not going to move the needle this quarter,” but should be “probably a big deal by Q3 or Q4 of next year.” The federal auto-safety regulator, NHTSA, opened a review in September of how Tesla certified the Cybercab as meeting federal safety standards.
He Saw It Coming in 2018
Self-driving cars were widely doubted back then. In 2018, Jeff notes, the media wrote that “experts doubt it will ever be possible to achieve full self-driving capabilities.”
That November, while the media was mocking Elon, Jeff Brown told his readers that Tesla was really an AI company:
Jeff says that AI is what drives the Cybercab today. It runs on an entirely vision-based AI, he says, which is why it needs no steering wheel or pedals.
He says it was “the most hated and controversial recommendation I had ever made.” He says Tesla went on to jump almost 2,200%. And he says the same background, more than two decades as a senior executive at Qualcomm, NXP Semiconductors and Juniper Networks, helped him pick Nvidia before it jumped as high as 37,800%.
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In 2019, while parts of the media called Starlink a “pipe dream,” he predicted it would get up and running and start selling its service. A year later, he says, it did.
Now he’s ridden in a Cybercab himself, to the first site of Terafab, Elon’s new chip factory. He says he could have taken a nap, watched Netflix or gotten some work done. All he had to do was tell the car where to go.
Why Not Just Buy Tesla?
Jeff still calls Tesla a great company over the long term. But he says it was “dirt cheap” when he first recommended it in 2018. “It’s not that cheap anymore.”
“But I’m not here to recommend Tesla,” he says. He says the Cybercab is part of step three of Elon’s three-step AI plan. And he says the better way in is through the little-known companies Elon will need along the way. He’s picked one for each step.
Three Steps, Three Picks
Step 1: Chips
Elon’s Terafab chip project. Jeff believes he’s found the company that will supply the chip-making machine it needs.
Step 2: Energy
Jeff says Elon plans to put AI chips on satellites, powered by the sun. His pick is a company he says has worked with SpaceX for more than a decade, on chips used in every Starlink satellite and ground terminal.
Step 3: Robots
Self-driving Cybercabs and Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot. His pick is a company he says already supplies Tesla with a key piece of sensor technology. He wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up supplying Optimus too.
The short version
- Tesla’s Cybercab has no steering wheel or pedals, and Cybercabs now outnumber Model Ys among Tesla’s registered robotaxis in Texas.
- Jeff Brown called Tesla an AI company in 2018, while the media was mocking Elon.
- This time he isn’t recommending Tesla. He’s picked a little-known company for each step of Elon’s AI plan: chips, energy and robots.
Jeff’s free presentation lays out all three steps. The companies’ names come with a paid subscription to The Near Future Report, which renews automatically each year.
Free to watch · Investing involves risk · Elon Musk hasn’t endorsed Jeff’s research. The picks are Jeff’s.
