If Tesla invites you to buy a Cybercab, the car costs $29,990 before taxes, and Tesla’s order page says a $299-a-month Autonomy Subscription is required to operate it. On November 13, 2026, Tesla’s Robotaxi account posted on X: “Select customers are now being invited to purchase Cybercab for personal use.” The post included a screenshot of the order page, and a reply from the same account showed the invitation email.
The Cybercab is Tesla’s two-seat self-driving car, which Tesla describes as “Designed for full autonomy without a steering wheel or pedals.” That sets the fee apart from the driver-assistance subscription on Tesla’s other cars: this one has no driver controls to fall back on. The order page puts it in one line: “Subscription and regular vehicle maintenance required to operate.”
For most readers nothing is on sale yet. The invitation email is headed “Early Access, Limited Release” and says “Initial availability is limited.” Tesla’s public Robotaxi page showed no Cybercab price or order button on November 13.
What the Order Page Shows
| Item | What Tesla’s order page and email show |
|---|---|
| Estimated purchase price | $29,990, excluding taxes |
| Autonomy Subscription | $299 a month, box already checked, one month included |
| Due at order | $1,000 non-refundable order deposit |
| Estimated delivery | December 2026 |
| Delivery location shown | Austin, Texas |
| Seats | Two |
| Screen | 21-inch center touchscreen |
| Storage | 20.1 cubic feet |
The subscription line carries its own fine print: the price “excludes taxes and is billed separately each month until canceled.” Placing an order means agreeing to a Cybercab Order Agreement and a separate Autonomy Subscription Agreement, and the screenshot does not show the text of either one.
Under the heading “Fully Autonomous,” the email says only: “Monitor your vehicle and manage your ride in the app.”
What It Costs to Keep One Running
At $299 a month, the subscription adds $3,588 a year. With the first month included, the first year comes to $33,279 for the car and the subscription alone: $29,990 plus 11 paid months, before taxes, insurance, maintenance and charging. Electrek puts the five-year total at about $47,600, “before insurance, maintenance, taxes, and charging.”
Nothing in the screenshots says the $299 price is locked. Not a Tesla App, which called the fee cheaper than it expected, warned that “it is a subscription and it can change at any time.”
For scale, Tesla sells Full Self-Driving (FSD) (Supervised), the driver-assistance package for its cars with steering wheels, as “a monthly subscription of $99.” Tesla’s support page says those features “require a fully attentive driver, who is prepared to take over at any moment.” The Cybercab’s subscription costs three times as much and pays for a car with no driver at all. The Autopilot vs. FSD guide covers what the $99 plan includes.
Which Areas Are Supported
The email’s footnote reads: “Only available in supported service areas. Subscription required for operation. Terms apply.” Neither the post nor its screenshots list those areas.
Two outlets that covered the launch read the footnote as a limit on where the car can drive, and they disagree on how wide it is. Electrek says the car works only inside Tesla’s Robotaxi service areas in Texas and Florida, which it counts as eight cities: Austin, Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Miami, Orlando and Tampa. Those are the same eight cities Tesla’s Robotaxi page lists for hailing a ride, though that page says nothing about cars sold for personal use. Not a Tesla App guesses narrower, saying the supported area is “which we imagine is Austin, Texas,” the city it calls the only place Tesla operates Cybercabs right now.
Tesla has not said whether an owner’s car is held to the same zones as its ride-hailing fleet. If it is, the map matters more than the price. Electrek reports that independent tracker Koby Pierce tested addresses in the Robotaxi app and found that the areas where Tesla accepts pickups and drop-offs cover 59% to 78% of the advertised zones in the six cities he checked, with Austin at about 59%. An owner whose home, job or usual errands sit outside the working zone could own a car that cannot reach them.
The Open Safety Question
Tesla is taking these orders while a federal review of the car is unfinished. Electrek reported on November 5 that Tesla had answered a Special Order from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) “demanding it prove, under oath, that the Cybercab meets federal safety standards.” One of those rules, Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 135, says “the service brakes shall be activated by means of a foot control,” according to Electrek.
Tesla’s response arrived on the October 30 deadline, and Tesla asked the agency to keep all of it confidential, Electrek reported. As of that report, NHTSA “hasn’t said anything about the request, and it hasn’t found the Cybercab noncompliant with any standard.” Electrek’s November 13 story says the agency still “hasn’t ruled.”
What Tesla Has Not Said
The post, the order page screenshot and the email leave out a lot. None of them says:
- who counts as a “select” customer or how to get an invitation
- the car’s range, battery size or how it charges
- what the warranty and insurance terms are (the order page has a “Warranty and Insurance” link, and the screenshot does not show where it leads)
- what “regular vehicle maintenance” involves or costs
- whether an owner can earn money by putting the car on Tesla’s ride-hailing network
- when ordering opens to everyone
On the ride-hailing point, Not a Tesla App reads “personal use” to mean the car “likely” cannot be used for work such as Uber or DoorDash. That is the outlet’s inference, not a Tesla statement.
How Tesla Got Here
Elon Musk promised a Cybercab “below $30,000” when he unveiled it in 2024, Electrek notes. The sticker price lands $10 under that line.
Selling to individuals is a change of emphasis. Not a Tesla App reports that Tesla opened a fleet purchasing interest form for businesses in September, that it targeted first customer deliveries by year-end on its third-quarter 2026 earnings call, and that Musk said on that call Tesla expected to own the vast majority of Cybercabs. Tesla’s Robotaxi page still points would-be fleet operators to an interest form.
What to Do Now
If you got an invitation: the $1,000 deposit is labeled non-refundable, so read the Order Agreement and the Autonomy Subscription Agreement before paying. Ask Tesla which service areas are supported before you pay, because the email does not list them. Until Tesla answers, the Robotaxi app’s pickup zone is the best available guide to where the car can go, and Electrek reports those zones are smaller than the advertised ones.
If you did not: there is nothing to order. You can hail a Tesla Robotaxi without buying one in the eight cities above. That ride may be a Model Y: Not a Tesla App says Austin is the only place Tesla operates Cybercabs right now.
If you own a Tesla with a steering wheel: nothing changes with this launch. Tesla lists FSD (Supervised) at $99 a month, and it still needs an attentive driver. Electrek, in its commentary on the launch, says Tesla keeps pushing unsupervised driving for Model Y owners who paid for FSD to “next year,” which it puts at “currently around Q2 2027.”
Sources (6)
- x.com Robotaxi on X: Cybercab personal-use invitations, order page and email (November 13, 2026)
- tesla.com Robotaxi page (read November 13, 2026)
- tesla.com Tesla Support: Full Self-Driving (Supervised) Subscriptions (read November 13, 2026)
- electrek.co Tesla Cybercab orders open at $29,990 + $299/mo, only in Robotaxi zones
- notateslaapp.com Tesla Opens Orders for the Cybercab for Personal Use
- electrek.co Tesla wants its sworn Cybercab answers to NHTSA kept entirely secret
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