You remember Tesla’s Cybercab, right? It’s the gold-colored Level 4 self-driving taxi that, stupidly, only seats two people. I still can’t get over that absurd design decision. Only two people? For a taxi? So a family of three would need two cabs? Ridiculous. But I guess the upside is that if something bad happens, only the smallest possible plural of people could be in danger. Which leads me to what I want to talk about now, the Tesla Robotaxi First Responder’s guides, which were released just recently.
These guides reveal a lot of interesting details about Tesla’s automated-driving ridesharing program, not the least of which is clarification about nomenclature: the overall automated service is called Robotaxi, and can use either Model Ys or Cybercabs, and Cybercab just refers to that one particular model itself. That helps clear that up!
So what can we learn from what’s in these First Responder guides? An awful lot, actually, so let’s take a look. First, we get this nice revealing block diagram of the Cybercab:
Block Diagram
There’s a lot to see here. The floor-mounted battery is the big orange rectangle, the high voltage lines are orange, and, interestingly, the low-voltage system is actually quite high voltage compared to most 12V low voltage systems: it’s 48 volts.
Perhaps most notably is the confirmation that this is, in fact, Tesla’s first FWD car. I mean, look:
Holy crap, that’s about as FWD as you can F a D, W-wise. This layout is also how the Cybercab can have such a colossal trunk:
I mean, I still think the body design and packaging on the Cybercab is uniquely and powerfully stupid; a taxi that only seats two just seems like an inane decision. Have a family of three? You’re hiring two cabs, champ. Why did they make this desision? Do they really need a station wagon’s worth of cargo space for two people who are presumably not using this to move their entire household?
Anyway, now we know the trunk opening process takes two steps: touch the OPEN TRUNK touchscreen button, then the button on the handle. I guess the touchscreen button is really an unlock button? You’d think it could pop the trunk open with just the touchscreen button, but I guess then ne’er-do-wells could grab your treasures out from there as you’re finishing making out with the other passenger.
Autonomous Behaviours And Indicators
There’s a lot of interesting information about how the Cybercab interacts with emergency workers and vehicles. The Cybercab operates as a Level 4 automated vehicle – complete autonomy in a restricted, geo-fenced area – but what I find most impressive is that Tesla seems to have trained the Cybercab how to read hand signals and understand paths delineated by cones (emphasis mine):
“Beyond the capabilities necessary for dynamic driving tasks, Cybercab Robotaxi exhibits these notable behaviors:
• When picking up passengers, the vehicle shifts to Park. Then, the front and rear lightbars pulse and the hazard lights flash at a normal rate until the vehicle shifts into Drive or Reverse.
• When dropping off passengers, the vehicle shifts to Park. Then, the hazard lights flash at a normal rate until the vehicle shifts into Drive or Reverse.
• Cybercab Robotaxi is designed to continue autonomous operation after the passengers have exited the vehicle, closed the doors, and retrieved any luggage.
• While waiting for a new ride booking, Cybercab Robotaxi roams its area of operation or proceeds to a charging station or parking lot.
• If the Battery charge level is too low to conduct another ride, Cybercab Robotaxi proceeds to a charging station before accepting new ride bookings.
• If Cybercab Robotaxi experiences connectivity or hardware issues, the hazard lights flash rapidly and the vehicle attempts to pull over at the nearest safe stopping location. Cybercab Robotaxi is also designed to respond to clearly visible hand signals from first responders and can follow pathways designated by cones.
Hazard Light Innovation
Those hazard lights are doing a lot of work, and Tesla seems to have developed an alternate hazard light behavior: the rapid flash. These flash the lights at about 2x the normal hazard light flash speed, and seem to indicate that autonomous modes have been disabled:
When Autonomous Mode is engaged, vehicle hazard lights flash at the standard rate for pick up and drop off. When Autonomous Mode is disabled, the vehicle hazard lights flash rapidly. Rapid flashing of the hazard lights is at approximately two times the speed of standard hazard light flashing. If the vehicle is being manually driven and no safety critical event has been triggered, Autonomous Mode is disengaged and the hazard lights flash at the standard rate, if activated by the driver. Hazard lights do not flash when Cybercab Robotaxi is charging.
Interesting. But this next bit I think is the biggest and most long-desired innovation:
It Actually Can Pull Over
One of my beefs with all the current Level 2 semi-automated systems is that when they encounter a fault that disables semi-self driving, all they do is turn on the hazard lights and slow down, coming to a stop in an active traffic lane. This is, I think, terrible. Happily, it seems like the Cybercab is capable of pulling off the road to a safe location:
Cybercab Robotaxi is designed to detect when a first responder vehicle is following Cybercab Robotaxi with lights and sirens on. When Cybercab Robotaxi detects that a first responder vehicle is following with lights and sirens active, the Cybercab Robotaxi vehicle pulls over and parks at the first safe location available. When pulling over, Cybercab Robotaxi attempts to avoid entering or blocking private driveways. If on the highway, after moving to the rightmost traffic lane, Cybercab Robotaxi might take some time to identify a safe location to pull over and stop.
Branding
The stupid, almost-illegible logo is on the doors and hatch of the car, so you’ll know what the hell you’re looking at.
Emergency Gold Dinner Tray Access
If you find yourself in desperate need of four large gold serving trays, this is how any Cybercab can provide a set of four. Basically, just grab and pull, all around the rim.
Where Is The Charger?
It’s way the hell down there, on the lower corner of the bumper! I suspect this location is designed to allow for automated plugging and unplugging of charging cables. Seems like a tripping hazard, so be careful out there.
It Sort Of Gets Treated Like An Animal
When in Autonomous Mode, the way the car is discussed feels a bit like wrangling an unpredictable animal. Like these warnings that, just because the car isn’t moving, it does not mean Autonomous mode is off:
To help mitigate the uncertain behavior, the guide suggests a few things:
Chocking wheels seems obvious, but more interesting is the “caging” process, where visual obstacles are placed within view of the car’s cameras so it feels like it’s “caged in.” If you’ll indulge me, I predicted something like this in my book back in 2019, but more in the context of things that kids who want to make trouble could do to “trap” automated vehicles. Same idea, though!
What Does It Do If Shit Goes Sideways
If the Cybercab detects a “safety critical event” (that’s a festive-sounding euphamism) then these are the actions the car will take:
Collisions and Safety Critical Events
Cybercab Robotaxi is designed to detect the occurrence of a safety critical event (such as a collision or airbag deployment). When detected, the vehicle is designed to stop, park, and disable Autonomous Mode where possible.
Cybercab Robotaxi then:
• Flashes the hazard lights rapidly.
• Unlocks the doors for easier egress.
• Rolls down the windows to vent the cabin if airbags deployed.
• Initiates two-way communication between the vehicle cabin and Tesla Robotaxi Support. Tesla Robotaxi Support can then contact 911 if necessary.
Those all seem like reasonable things to do; of course, reality is messy, so sometimes things don’t happen so neatly. That’s why there’s helpful diagrams showing, for example, where not to cut through the body/frame:
The drivetrain and battery areas are pretty self-evident, and the hatch has springs and gas struts – not sure about the windshield area zone, though.
How Does The Car Hear Sirens And Spoken Commands From Outside?
You know how: microphones! There’s two, on the B-pillars.
There’s No Hood Stay
If you want to open the hood, you can, but there’s no built-in way to keep it open. Which is probably fine, since no one is really tinkering on these. The main power cut loops are under there, as you can see above.
What’s The Inside Like?
Hope you like minimalism! Because they added a ton of that in here! They just slathered on that nothing, on every possible surface!
There really doesn’t seem to be any physical controls there, so if the power is compromised, it makes doing anything quite difficult.
Where Are The Emergency Door Release Handles?
Right there, on the leading edge of the armrest. Like other Tesla emergency door releases, this one can break the glass. Why, Tesla, why? There has to be a better way.
Oh, and when you get the door open, with some difficulty, be wary of this powered door strut. There’s preloaded springs in that thing! That’s a lot of stored energy; respect it.
Towing And Jump Starting
Want to tow a Cybercab? Maybe one that is trying to make a nest on your property, under your shed? To drag it out, you need the towing eye, which seems to be hidden under the front license plate mounting panel. It’s either a carabiner under there, or two straps. You should be able to get your ox hooked up to those to drag it away, for good.
Jump Starting
So this one is sort of deceptively tricky; there is a jump start connector, but you can’t just jump the low-voltage system with any car, because it’s a 48V system. Maybe you could wire four cars in series?
The Cybercab is definitely an interesting machine, but it does seem to offer a number of non-trivial challenges for First Responders. I’m most interested in its behaviors when interacting with emergency workers and vehicles; will it be predictable? Useful? Will it know when to get out of the way, what to avoid, and not make a nuisance of itself? Maybe. I hope so.
But with the vast entropy of the real world, who can say? I guess we’ll just have to see.
I don’t dislike this design or use case…. With a steering wheel and a back window
The diagram which shows the gas struts with green icons had me confused for a minute. I thought they designed in some kind of fancy cantilever suspension and that’s why the struts were in unusual locations
I don’t know if I’m crazy or alone or whatever, but if you put in a rear window, manual controls, and painted it something other than Grandma’s Solara Gold, I would love to have one as a personal car.
I’m guessing Tesla aren’t going to pay for the millions of hours of specialist training required by first responders wherever these boondoggles are released onto an unsuspecting public? I’m so sick of moronic techbro garbage being foisted on the rest of the world
Now that I have seen several of these driving around town, I can confidently assert that the dimensions are truly weird – elongated, top-heavy looking, ungainly, plastic-looking, very claustrophobic interior space, etc. If you are the sort of person who hails an autonomous rideshare, the Jaguar e-Pace is a FAR more sturdy-looking and safe-appearing, despite the bulbous apparatus festooning the exterior.
I take it Elon finally saw Back to the Future II and ordered a car based on the prop vehicles?
Timely article. I just walked by one labeled a development vehicle parked near downtown Palo Alto. Same sickly color.
There’s so much needless complication of solved problems. As if Elon wasn’t reason enough to stay the hell away from Tesla.
My favourite part is where they put the HVIL cut loops both on the same side of the car.
Dumb- yes. But good for the ultimate objective: Elon losing money.
The idea of actually using four 12v vehicles to jump one 48v one brings me tremendous joy
The unreadable font is the one used by the role-playing game Cyberpunk since the late 80s, which is obviously a fascination for Musk as Cyber-whatever seems to come up often in his products, and also in that he seems to be trying to build a real-life equivalent to the malevolent megacorps that dominate the world of the game.
I’m pretty sure he thinks that the corpo antagonists of most dystopian cyberpunk fiction are just “misunderstood.”
“not sure about the windshield area zone, though.”
I’m pretty sure it’s because that’s where the gas bottle is stored for the side curtain airbags; you can see them in the first block diagram you posted.
I’m convinced the cybercab is only two seats because they didn’t bother to look at rideshare ridership numbers outside of SF and NY
The people riding this thing will have most of their ‘friends’ on Twitter.
As Torch pointed out in his book, there is a real vulnerability for passengers in autonomous vehicles. What happens when someone approaches you at a stop light and starts banging on your side window and screaming at you in downtown Oakland while you’re riding in an autonomous vehicle? That’s what I’d like to know.
You pull the blicky out of your fanny pack and sort it out. This is America, son. (Especially in Oakland)
When that happens you would just roll down the window, make sure your hands remain visible, and say “Can I help you, Officer?”
The two actions to open the boot are alternatives. You need to perform only one of them to open the boot.
The active pedestrian protection system is legitimately surprising- would indicate a substantial effort to support European pedestrian safety legislation. Given the cybertruck is very much not ready for the EU market, I figured that Tesla was becoming much more US-centric.
Admittedly it’s not as ugly as the Cybertruck. Just as dumb though.
The most interesting feature of this first responder’s manual (to me) is the typeface and kerning. It looks very similar to the typeface used in Mercedes Benz factory maintenance manuals from the 1970s and 1980s, except those were typeset manually and the kerning was a little looser, but the resemblance is striking.
Is that tradition, or just a happy accident? Not all sans-serif typefaces look the same, and this doesn’t look like Arial or Helvetica, so it was a conscious choice somebody made and now I’m curious.
Example:
https://imgur.com/a/5vB7Eof
The typeface in the link is a bit taller in the height-to-width ratio, and to me it reminds me more of the typeface also used in Haynes manuals. The typeface in the Tesla excerpts has more equal height-to-width proportions. It also reminds me more of the body text used in Petersen manuals from the US.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are EU (and formerly DIN) and SAE/ASE specs for manual text used for official and supporting purposes on both sides of the pond.
It is heavily regulated by an ISO standard as well as EuroNCAP requirements, down to colour, shape and text.
“Want to tow a Cybercab? Maybe one that is trying to make a nest on your property, under your shed?”
That was nearly a spit-take for me
48v car systems are exciting, since RVs do, 48v there are many electric accessories available for living in your car/overlanding.
Not in this vehicle of course but others someday.
48V electricals in RVs is still relatively new. I’m assimilating all the systems on my 2005 diesel pusher, and it’s all 12V for DC systems in both the “house” side and the chassis side.
Even the starting batteries. Yes, you can start a 15-liter diesel with a couple of big 12V batteries in series, but that’s a lot of current, even for warm-weather starts. 24V would be a lot more efficient. I can see where cold-weather starting is going to make pre-heating mandatory. (Fortunately, there’s a diesel-fired hydronic heating system in the coach, and it has a heating loop connected to the engine cooling system to act as an alternative to the electric block heater. So if it has to start in the winter, the procedure is going to be to turn on the heating system first and walk away for an hour or so before attempting to start the engine.) With a 12V system for starting a big diesel, you really have to make sure all your connections — especially grounds — are clean and tight. (Because, of course, they weren’t when the bus came into my hands…)
It seems to be following a decision in the truck diesel market to go to 12V starters and engine electricals instead of the older 24V systems, since 12V is so widespread in the automotive industry as a whole. There’s some sense to it — I once worked in a shop where our fleet was mostly medium-duty gas and diesels with 12V electricals. It was annoying if one of the big 24V trucks needed to be jump-started. They also had the added annoyance of needing a 12V split off the alternator to charge a smaller 12V battery and run all the lights and radios; yet another point of failure. Multiple voltages means more complex wiring harnesses and caution when connecting accessories to make sure you’re on the right power bus.
And the “Opening the Trunk …” instructions is exactly why confusion can exist in writing instructions. They used “one of the following” followed by numbered paragraphs. Are they sequential or can either be used? The use of numbered paragraphs is confusing to some folks. So, in this case, bullets should have been used instead to reduce the confusion. Bullets do not imply sequence. I would ask the Subject Matter Expert to be sure that either of those two listed items would indeed open the trunk. Ah, the life of a Tech Writer. What was the vehicle? I got distracted by sequential paragraph numbering.
Do I cut the blue wire or the red wire?
Yes!… WAIT!.., NO!.. What tint are your glasses?
If this works as it is described – SAE Level 4 – it’s pretty impressive. My only complaint is the packaging. My opinion is that it should be an upright seating situation that older/injured/disabled people can get into and out of effortlessly. It might be comfortable when you’re in it, but if you can’t easily get in and out, it’s a problem. If you’re young and flexible, that’s great, but a lot of people aren’t. Also, it couldn’t hurt to add another seat or two.
Sort-of on topic, but applicable more widely, I have safety concerns about vehices that bury so many controls behind electronics. Computer programs malfunction regularly. I understand that these are supposed to fail to a safe condition, but what happens when they don’t? There are no controls for emergency personnel or passengers to take charge of if needed.
Off topic, I was thinking about vents controlled through a touchscreen interface today. I’ve been told many times that you set them and forget them, but I don’t. When I got in my car today, I was hot and the cabin was sweltering. I aimed the vents at myself and put it on Max AC. A little while later, I had cooled off, so I switched back to auto and aimed the vents more into the cabin. I have buttons for this, and it makes me happy. (Buttons for the settings and manual vents.)
The sad irony is that this thing seems pretty well-packaged and designed for a coupe if only it had a rear window, bench seat, and steering wheel. It’s like a modern interpretation of a gen1 Insight.
But would you use a gen1 Insight as a taxi? I think not.
Without looking into the details, this just seems like a vehicle that was meant to be something else and turned into a confusing taxi later.
Designers: We have drawn up plans for Tesla’s first liftback sport coupe!
Elon Musk: That’s such…old fashioned…thinking. Turn the hatch…into a… giant…trunk lid…make it a fully…autonomous…vehicle with no…manual controls. It’ll be like a…cybernetic…taxicab…a Cybercab!
(the few clips I have seen of Musk have him speaking very slowly)
“It’ll be ready by Q3 and we anticipate completing 100m rides by year-end.”
Now pump and dump those shares on my mark
3… 2… 1… NOW
I hate how accurately you did that. I could hear it precisely in his voice and cadence.
Am I crazy to think this was supposed to be the next gen of the roadster? 2 seats, and massive storage area for convertible top components or second performance-inclined engine. Maybe the economics didn’t work out or there was a serious structural issue after design, so they slapped a hardtop on it and called it the taxi?