018How many Cybercabs will be on US roads by 2027?

It arrives in batches

Since May 28, Texas has required every company running driverless commercial vehicles to hold an authorization from its DMV, and the authorization lists each car. That makes Texas the one state where Cybercabs can be counted. The first seven appeared on August 31, then 45 the same day, three days before Tesla’s launch event in Austin. The count reached 126 by September 26, jumped by 150 on October 9 and by 81 on October 27, and has stood at 573 since October 28. Across the whole record it has doubled every 14 days; over the last 30, every 16. On October 27 Cybercabs passed Model Ys on the roster for the first time, and by November 1 Tesla listed 1,244 vehicles in Texas to Waymo’s 1,259.

A listing is not a ride. A crowd-sourced tracker had spotted 229 different Cybercabs on the road by late October. Tesla said on October 10 that more than 300 were serving Austin, and on its October 21 call that the Austin Cybercab fleet had grown tenfold in its first month.

The factory isn’t the constraint

Tesla assigned VIN number 1 at the start of production on April 24. Serial 2,172 was photographed on August 9, and serial 3,358 joined the Texas roster on September 18, when the roster held fewer than 70 Cybercabs. If the serials are close to sequential, Tesla was building about 30 a day in August and September; at that pace it would have built about 4,700 by November 1, eight times what Texas lists. Tesla’s Lars Moravy said in October that the line, rated at more than 125,000 cars a year, doesn’t run every day because it is outpacing deployments. About 200 Cybercabs were parked at Tesla’s Houston robotaxi lot in early October, and residents near Miami’s airport had watched another lot fill for about two months. What limits the fleet is where Tesla may operate and how fast it opens cities.

Cities, not curves

If the roster kept doubling every two weeks, Texas alone would hold about 12,000 Cybercabs at the end of 2026, 100,000 by mid-February and a million by the end of March 2027, eight times what the line is rated to build in a year. If it kept October’s pace of about 415 a month, the country would have about 6,400 at the end of 2027. Neither is how a robotaxi fleet grows. It grows when a city opens: the Texas roster gained more than 500 Cybercabs in the two months after Austin opened. So we model the fleet as a rollout of cities, each with a date it opens, a pace at which it fills and a number of cars it can use.

Twenty-two states, most of the Sun Belt

Twenty-one states allow driverless commercial service in statute, and Colorado allows it if the system can follow traffic laws, which is how Waymo runs in Denver. Texas requires the DMV authorization above; Florida requires no state permit; Arizona runs on self-certification, and Tesla already holds its statewide ride-hail permit. Nevada’s Transportation Authority approved Tesla for up to 5,000 cars in Las Vegas on August 20, with 120 days from the permit’s issue to start service. Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Louisiana, Michigan, Oklahoma and Utah allow it too, and Pennsylvania does once PennDOT reviews a company’s self-certification. California allows it but requires DMV driverless and CPUC deployment permits; Tesla holds neither and runs its Bay Area service with safety drivers. New York and Washington, DC still require a human in the car.

The federal question is bigger. The Cybercab has no steering wheel or pedals, and Tesla certified it as meeting every federal safety standard instead of asking NHTSA for an exemption. NHTSA opened an audit of that certification hours after public rides began on September 4, and on September 10 ordered Tesla to justify it, starting with FMVSS 135’s rule that service brakes be applied by a foot control. Tesla asked for until November 20; NHTSA gave it until October 30. If NHTSA disagrees, the fallback is an exemption like the one Zoox received in July, which caps a pedal-less fleet at 2,500 cars a year. NHTSA proposed changes to FMVSS 135 in June, but a proposal doesn’t change the standard, and Congress has bills that would raise the exemption cap to 90,000 a year; none is law.

Most of Waymo’s map is open to Tesla

Waymo carries riders in 15 US metro areas. Twelve are in states that already allow driverless service without permits Tesla lacks; the other three are in California. Tesla runs driverless rides in six of the twelve (Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Tampa) and has named three more (Las Vegas, Phoenix and San Antonio), plus Jacksonville, which Waymo doesn’t serve. That leaves Atlanta, Nashville and Denver. Waymo’s list of next cities adds five more in friendly states (Charlotte, Detroit, New Orleans, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh), Sacramento, and nine that need a state law or permit change first, led by New York, Chicago and Washington.

The base case copies the friendly part of that map. Cybercab rides open in Dallas in November, Houston in December, Miami and Las Vegas in January, the rest of Tesla’s named cities by May, then Atlanta, Nashville, Denver, Charlotte and New Orleans from June to October 2027. That puts about 59 million people in Cybercab metros by the end of 2027, against 2.6 million today. Detroit, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia wait for spring 2028. The bull case runs the same list faster, adds 20 smaller friendly-state metros from mid-2027 and California from October 2027. The bear case gets through Tesla’s named cities only by early 2028.

Q4 2026 and 2027

The fourth quarter. Tesla said Cybercab rides start in Dallas in November and in “some other cities” before the year ends. The base case opens Dallas in November and Houston in December, where about 200 Cybercabs were already parked in October, and reaches about 2,000 on December 31, up from 573: about 700 a month, against about 415 in October. The bull case also opens Houston in November and Miami and Las Vegas in December, for about 4,500. The bear case adds only Dallas, for about 1,000.

2027. In the base case each city adds Cybercabs at about Austin’s pace, 275 a month for a metro of Austin’s size (scaled by the square root of population), until it reaches 0.4 Cybercabs per 1,000 residents, a ceiling that rises to 0.5 by December 2027. The fleet passes Waymo’s whole current fleet of about 4,000 in February 2027 and 10,000 in April 2027, and ends 2027 at about 29,000 in 15 metro areas. On the October call Musk said robotaxis start to matter to Tesla’s results in the second quarter of 2027 and become a big deal by the third or fourth; Tesla’s Ashok Elluswamy said the limits would shift from technology to regulation around the first half.

The range. The bull case has Cybercabs in 35 metros by December 2027 at up to 1.5 per 1,000 residents, and is held back by the factory in the second half, ending at about 134,000. The bear case assumes NHTSA rejects the self-certification: no new Cybercabs from April to June 2027 while Tesla files for an exemption, then 2,500 a year until the foot-control rule changes in mid-2028. It ends 2027 at about 4,900. Weighting the bear and bull cases at a quarter each and the base at half gives about 49,000, pulled up by the bull case.

Texas holds every Cybercab today. In the base case it is still the largest group at the end of 2027, with about 37% of the fleet, ahead of the other friendly states (26%), Florida (25%) and Arizona and Nevada (13%). Its share falls because the second wave of cities is outside it. In the bull case California adds about 7,200 by December 2027, three months after its first city opens.

A million is a 2030s number

The base case passes 10,000 in April 2027, between the bull case’s February 2027 and the bear case’s July 2028. 50,000 and 100,000 need cities beyond Waymo’s current map: the base case gets there in July 2028 and June 2029, the bull case in July 2027 and October 2027, when the factory is the limit. A million needs about five Cybercabs per 1,000 residents across most of the country’s big metros, ten times our 2027 density. The base case gets there in December 2033 and the bull case in June 2030; the bear case doesn’t by 2034. Beyond 2027 these are scenarios, not forecasts: they rest on how far prices fall and how many states change their rules.

Demand is the ceiling

At 15 rides a car a day, 29,000 Cybercabs would give about 440,000 rides a day, six times Waymo’s current pace. 100,000 would give 1.5 million, about a fifth of all US Uber and Lyft trips in 2025. A million would give 15 million, 2.2 times what Uber and Lyft carry in the whole country. Tesla can build that many cars. The open questions are whether rides get cheap enough to replace driving, city by city, and whether regulators let Tesla follow the riders.

What to watch

NHTSA’s answer. Tesla’s sworn answers were due October 30. A closed audit removes most of the bear case; a Part 555 exemption petition in the Federal Register would confirm it.

Dallas in November. The base case needs the Texas roster to add about 700 a month through December; October added about 415.

Las Vegas by mid-to-late December, when the 120-day clock on Tesla’s Nevada permit runs out; it counts from the permit’s issue, after the August 20 approval. Tesla can start with Model Ys; Cybercabs there would show that a second state is open to them.

Tesla’s fourth-quarter letter, due in late January, the first chance for an official fleet count, and whether Phoenix, San Antonio and Jacksonville move from “coming soon” to live.