Image: Tesali via X
According to a lead Tesla engineer, the company’s upcoming Robotaxi, the Cybercab, is expected to have 50% fewer parts than Tesla’s Model 3 electric sedan.
At a talk in the US, Eric E from Tesla Engineering shared some key insights into the design of the recently unveiled Cybercab, which many consider to be the future of passenger transportation.
In the interview Eric E shares the advantages of going with two seats layout of the vehicle and the parts reduction it brings: “We cut the parts down in the Cybercab by a substantial margin. We are going to be delivering a car with roughly half the parts of the Model 3 today.”
This was recorded by Tesali on X and shared with other engineering and autonomous driving enthusiasts.
This represents considerable savings in the parts needed to build the Cybercab and will reduce the cost of manufacturing and maintaining it during the vehicle’s operating life.
At an October unveiling event, Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, confirmed that this two-seater model is expected to be in production by 2026 at a price point of around $US30,000 or under $A45,000.
These savings in parts is one of the key factors that will help it get to that price point which is cheaper than any Tesla model the company sells today.
Further details were shared in the comments of that video where the total structural parts count in the Cybercab stands at roughly 80 when compared to the world’s best-selling car, the Model Y, which has around 200 parts.
Tesali shared: “Yes. About 80 parts for the body structure compared to 200 for the Y. 🤯 is the right reaction”
This would make it have less than 60% fewer structural components than Model Y, which is a big achievement.
Other details shared in the talk were related to the interior. It was confirmed that the large screen on the inside of the Cybercab is the largest in any Tesla, coming in at 21 inches.
Eric E, the Cybercab lead engineer, finished the talk by highlighting what the Tesla Cybercab engineering team is aiming to deliver: “We are really focused on delivering a super efficient, really cool, fun, comfortable product.”
It’s great to see the company’s passionate engineering team share some key details of the upcoming robotaxi, which could potentially reshape the way many see transport today.
Riz is the founder of carloop based in Melbourne, specialising in Australian EV data, insight reports and trends. He is a mechanical engineer who spent the first 7 years of his career building transport infrastructure before starting carloop. He has a passion for cars, particularly EVs and wants to help reduce transport emissions in Australia. He currently drives a red Tesla Model 3.
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Any chance we can get a new Tesla CEO with half the
partsbrainfarts?Speaking of which, it can't be long before Mr dutton or one of the COALition cohort declares that buying an electric car is un Australian.
Half the parts but not half the price.
This is a big gamble, and if it doesn't pan out and doesn't work or people start dying I think the regulators under Trump will ditch it.
Tesla needs to focus on a human-driven Model 2 that competes with the MG4, and let the FSD research continue in the background.
Yep. Every EV maker should have an AV plan, long-term, but keep selling regular cars until the tech is ready.
FSD is basically done. They have a few new features to add such as parking choice (where the driver gets to choose what the car should do on reaching the destination, such as pulling over to the side of the road, parking in a marked parking spot, or pulling into a driveway and parking in a garage), and a couple other things. That should be done by the end of January. Then they will need a couple months to make refinements based on feedback from the half-million or so test vehicles they have on American roads. Then, depending on regulatory approval, I expect Tesla to start testing driverless rides in the middle of next year.
Wrt to a cheaper car, as of the last earnings report in October, Tesla intends to start making a lower-priced vehicle in the middle of next year. Initial production is expected to be in the US. Tesla have not said anything about when production of the new vehicle will begin outside of the US.
“FSD is basically done”
As in stick-a-fork-in-it? Yeah, it’s done alright.
”I expect Tesla to start testing driverless rides in the middle of next year”
🤣
Elon Musk, April 2017: “November or December of this year, we should be able to go from a parking lot in California to a parking lot in New York, no controls touched at any point during the entire journey”
🤣🤣🤣
It still makes no sense to have two seats. A Chevy Bolt is no bigger. Or make it like a London cab with fold down seats. This is like the Cybertruck, a brain fart of an idea from a buch of out of touch tech bros.
$45000 gets you a car with 4/5 seats that you can actually drive.
London cab design is the most practical. Huge doors and high roof so you can practically walk into it holding multiple bags, plus backward facing seats which is a key AV idea. A very intelligent design.
Intelligent yes.
Safe at speeds above 60kph? Unlikely.
Regularly watching Dash Cam Owners Australia for five years or more has led me to reconsider my previous stance, and I'm now leaning towards the belief that perhaps Australians should not drive faster than 60 kph.
What was your previous stance?
No speed limits?
Any amount of studies have proved that traffic flows better at reduced speed.
Carnage. Appropriate word.
City/suburban streets? 30 kph. Urban connectors? 60. maybe 80 if they aren't stroads.
Highways? depends. higher if they made proper infrastructure and got all the trucks off them etc.
but if everyone is going to drive around in 2.5 - 4 tonne behemoths, well, 60 it is.
Be good to understand what the "missing parts " are. How many are by having fewer seats, not being able to have a human driver, and how many are reduced/improved via different construction techniques? And how are repair processes changed? Are more of these cars going to be written off from some kinds of accidents because bigger pieces need to be replaced?
Who cares, surely …
Don't call me Shirley!
When I catch a cab, I always tell the 3rd and 4th people in the group to go catch their own. Makes a lot of sense..
Vapourware.....
like FSD which he's been promising for a over decade
like the new roadstar
like crewed missions to Mars in 2024....
He's just making up numbers re cybercab and cost to run them
https://youtu.be/ZoE4_u8x4i4?si=HV1LhhE-cSZLAhks
Can you still sleep in the back when camping, like I do in my M3?
You can if you're drunk enough. The cab won't care, the meter's running. It will deliver you home or to the police.
Looking past the CEO (I know its hard to do), to have 'half' the parts is a phenomenal achievement from a manufacturability perspective. A 10% reduction is considered big- and every improvement is increasingly difficult. Kudos to the design team, the system they've built to work in and begrudgingly, the driving force that made it happen.
Elon Musk doing his best to destroy Tesla and kill the mission to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable transport” with brain-fart products rather than a coherent product pipeline that would encourage people to replace their ICE vehicles with BEV.
Why hasn’t the Board fired ketamine-addled Musk yet?
The "board" is basically MIA. They are obviously paid (off?) enough to not care.