Tesla has begun inviting "select customers" to order a Cybercab for personal use at $29,990 before taxes, but the two-seater will not move unless the buyer also pays $299 a month for an "Autonomy Subscription," Electrek reported, with the invitation also described by Teslarati. Tesla's official Robotaxi account announced the invites on X on Friday, with screenshots of the order page and email. The page lists an estimated delivery of December 2026 in Austin, Texas, and requires a $1,000 non-refundable deposit. The subscription is pre-checked at $299 a month, with one month included, and the fine print says "Subscription and regular vehicle maintenance required to operate." The email's asterisk is more direct: "Only available in supported service areas. Subscription required for operation."
The vehicle has two seats, a 21-inch center touchscreen, 20.1 cubic feet of cargo space, and no steering wheel or pedals. Tesla calls it "fully autonomous" and says the owner will "manage your ride in the app." Elon Musk had promised a Cybercab "below $30,000" when the vehicle was unveiled in 2024. The list price meets that figure before taxes; it does not include the subscription, which Electrek calculated at $3,588 a year, or about $47,600 over five years before insurance, maintenance, taxes and charging. "Supported service areas," as Electrek reported, means the eight cities where Tesla already runs Robotaxi: Austin, Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth and San Antonio in Texas, and Miami, Orlando and Tampa in Florida. Outside those geofences, the publication wrote, the car cannot operate.
Those service areas are also smaller in practice than Tesla's maps suggest, according to independent tests cited by Electrek. Tracker Koby Pierce tried thousands of addresses in the Robotaxi app and found that actual pickup and drop-off coverage was only 59% to 78% of the advertised geofences in the six cities he checked, and about 59% in Austin, the city where Tesla plans to deliver the first personal cars. In Houston, the creator of Robotaxi Tracker found the app quoting about 40 minutes to go two blocks downtown because the vehicle appeared to route around rail crossings. Tesla lists San Antonio's airport inside its polygon but, Electrek said, does not serve it. Over that hangs a regulatory question: the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has ordered Tesla to prove under oath that a car with no brake pedal meets federal standards that require one. Tesla answered on Oct. 30 and asked that the entire response be kept confidential. NHTSA has not ruled. Tesla is inviting orders anyway.
The verified facts are the invitation, the $29,990 list price, the mandatory $299 monthly fee, the Austin December delivery window, and the geofence limits described by the sources. This is not a nationwide on-sale, and it is not a car that can be driven like a Model Y. The headline price is real, and so is the subscription without which, the order page says, the vehicle will not operate.
