Tesla said it will start selling its Cybercab to customers by the end of the year, even though federal regulators are investigating whether the vehicle meets vehicle safety standards.
The announcement came during the company's third-quarter earnings call, where Lars Moravy, Tesla's vice president of engineering, spoke. The Cybercab is a gold-hued, autonomous two-seater. It has no steering wheel and lacks other traditional controls, so there is nothing for a human to take over with.
Tesla has not disclosed a price or volume for the sales it is promising, and the investigation is still open. That leaves a deadline of a few months set against an unresolved question about whether the car conforms to the rules.
The design is what puts the safety question front and center. A car with no wheel or pedals asks regulators to judge a vehicle on different terms than one a person can steer, and the probe is about exactly that: whether the car meets the standards.
The pitch also differs from the best-known rival approach. Waymo, for one, runs a fleet of driverless cars that riders hail, rather than selling the vehicles to customers. Selling a Cybercab outright would put a no-controls car in the hands of buyers, which raises the stakes if the regulatory answer is slow or unfavorable.
The open question is what a customer would actually receive by December 31: a car they can use, or one that waits on a regulator's verdict.