Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk said Wednesday that the vast majority of Cybercabs will be owned by the automaker and operated as part of a transport-as-a-service model, rather than sold outright to consumers.

Lars Moravy Touts Cybercab’s End-of-Year Timeline

During Tesla’s Q3 earnings call on Wednesday, analysts questioned when Tesla’s Cybercab would be available for customer purchase, which, incidentally, was also one of the top questions on investors’ minds going into the earnings.

The EV giant’s VP of Vehicle Engineering, Lars Moravy, pointed to AI lead Ashok Elluswamy’s comments about the Cybercab and the Model Y having the same software, which will be released by the company as part of the Full Self-Driving (FSD) V15 release.

“We suspect somewhere around Q2 next year is when we can turn on some of the first customer vehicles to be part of the Robotaxi fleet,” Elluswamy said, outlining that for customer Model Ys to be a part of the Robotaxi fleet’s management and geofences, they had to be fully autonomous.

Following his comments, Moravy added that the company was “trying to get CyberCabs to customers by the end of this year, 2026.” He also pointed out that Tesla’s current Cybercab units being produced in Texas are all going into the EV giant’s internal fleet. Still, he reassured that the Cybercab will be the company’s first “fully designed autonomous vehicle” that it will deliver to its customers.

Elon Musk Says Cybercabs Will Be Tesla-Owned

Musk, adding to Moravy’s comments, said that the Cybercab will “primarily” be offered as a “transport-as-a-service,” as compared to traditional vehicles that customers “would want to own” like the Model Y or the Roadster high-performance EV, which is slated to enter production in 2028. “The vast majority of the CyberCab stuff will be essentially Tesla-owned and transport-as-a-service,” Musk reiterated.

Earlier this month, the CEO had said that Tesla’s Cybercab and its Optimus robot would represent a “vast majority” of the EV giant’s valuation. Notably, investor Cathie Wood-led ARK Invest, in a recently published report, said that the Robotaxi service will make up for over 80% of Tesla’s enterprise value.

Tesla’s Earnings

The EV maker reported revenue of $28.05 billion for the quarter, which exceeded the market consensus of $27.88 billion. Tesla’s automotive revenue was down 3% YoY to $20.56 billion, while its EPS was 48 cents per share, beating analyst estimates of 43 cents per share. Tesla also reported 1.74 million active FSD subscriptions, up 67% YoY.

Price Action: TSLA shares were down 4.42% to $369.39 during overnight trading on Wednesday.

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