Yesterday, Tesla launched their first official rollout of their Cybercab at an event in Austin, Texas. While Tesla already operates Model Y-based autonomous robotaxis in the city, this is the first time they will be using their purpose-built Cybercabs for the job. And that is a big deal! This is actually the first time a car designed from the get-go for autonomous driving, not having conventional human-usable controls at all, has been deployed in any quantity on public streets, for public use, and that’s an impressive milestone. All of that makes it more baffling why Tesla would choose to highlight something about the Cybercab that it’s not really designed to do. And, beyond that, it’s just a confusing message.
I’ll explain what I mean. As part of their promotion of the Cybercab launch, they highlight the accessibility features of their robotaxis and associated apps and services, which is, of course, great. More accessibility for people with all kinds of specific needs is important. Here’s what the text says on Tesla’s website:
Making Autonomy Accessible
We are building an autonomous future that is accessible to all people. Our Robotaxi vehicles are designed to support various accessibility needs including space for service animals and room in the trunk to store some wheelchairs and other assistive devices. The Robotaxi app is screen-reader compatible and is currently available in 29 languages with more being added.
All of that is good: a big trunk that can hold assistive devices is welcome (even if it does come at the cost of a back seat, since these things only seat two people, which seems a little ridiculous, but, whatever, we covered that already) in a taxi, and the Cybercab absolutely has that. I mean, a Checker or Crown Vic taxi did, too, but whatever.
Anyway, that’s not the problem. The problem is with the video Tesla made to promote the Cybercab’s accessibility that’s on their website and, in truncated form, in this tweet (which, by the way, as of this writing has about 12 million views and over 1000 comments, so people are talking about this, it seems):
Cybercab is designed to be a great experience for every rider pic.twitter.com/wG0jrvJ6pX
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 3, 2026
Okay, see what’s going on there? There’s a pretty big and crucial omission in this little video. Let’s take a look:
Okay, so we have our man here approaching the Cybercab in his wheelchair. The trunk opens, so that’s nice. Then the scene cuts to some other dude walking up and putting a suitcase in the trunk, and then a guy on crutches approaches. Then, we cut to the crutches being placed in the trunk (I guess the guy hops as best he can around to the door), and then the suitcase gets put in, and then we see this:
Yes, it’s our friend in the wheelchair, only now he’s shown standing and loading the wheelchair into the trunk.
Huh.
Now, to be fair, we don’t know this guy’s whole backstory. Maybe he just has really nice new shoes he doesn’t want to sully on the filthy pavement. Maybe he has some more minor foot injury and doesn’t want to use crutches like the other guy. All of that is possible.
But when you show someone in a wheelchair, the thinking is generally not that the person in that wheelchair can stand or walk or fold their own wheelchair, lift it up, and put it in a car trunk. In fact, I’d argue that the opposite is usually the case.
I mean, there are special and very specific taxis designed just for people in wheelchairs, and they have special ramps and lifts so a person who uses a wheelchair can just roll into the vehicle while remaining in the wheelchair. You know, like these:
That is an accessible vehicle for a wheelchair user. The Cybercab? I’m not so sure. I reached out to someone who actually uses a wheelchair on a daily basis, and when shown this video, they responded, “How is this more accessible than any other normal car?”
This same person, when noting that the video on Tesla’s site is associated with the heading “Making Autonomy Accessible,” stated that “it doesn’t seem that way based on the video.”
She did also note that there are ranges of disabilities and some wheelchair owners could potentially stand and fold and store their chairs, but stated that wasn’t common and the car would still need other adaptive modifications to be actually “accessible.”
I think the biggest issue is that if you’re going to show a person in a wheelchair in a video promoting the accessibility of your autonomous taxi, it’s at best weird and at worst deceptive to expect that people would think anything other than the person in the wheelchair is unable to walk, or fold and put away their wheelchair.
Plus, this is a completely unforced error. No one forced Tesla to show a person in a wheelchair in a promotional video for the Cybercab. All they had to do was … anything but this. Nothing about this decision makes any sense. A wheelchair user traveling alone has less of a reason to seek an autonomous taxi, because the human driver of a conventional taxi can at least help the person into the cab and store the wheelchair, even if that cab isn’t a specially designed accessible taxi.
Tesla could have made this video and had the wheelchair user traveling with someone else, which would have eliminated this whole problem. They also could have made the Cybercab actually wheelchair accessible, but they chose not to do that. People have discussed this issue before. That’s fine, but that should at least maybe make Tesla consider not trying to suggest that this two-door, two-seater, low-slung vehicle is a good choice for a wheelchair user.
Why do they do this to themselves? I don’t get it.
Top graphic images: Tesla/X
I’ve seen 2 of these, or 1 twice, here just north of Clearwater.
Gotta love the libertarian disdain for the infirm
They really would prefer a “final solution” for those who are not perfect.
The Soylent Green Cab Company.
Food or fuel, which is a better use for the “disadvantaged”?
Years ago I was having a conversation with a libertarian acquaintance about disability access; his opinion was ‘If someone wants special treatment, they should pay for it.’
In his mind, using a wheelchair was the same as upgrading to business class.
I believe in helping the truly infirm but as they add parking spots for employee of the month, veterans, expectant mother, new mothers, and spots for cart returns I’m starting to get over it. I went to a Lowes at 9AM to pick up one item and my pedometer said I walked a half mile. No cars but mine but still the closest spot was halfway down the lot. Then enter here exit on the other side of the store, bathroom back of the store, check out the other side of the store and exit on the other side of the store, unload your stuff and walk the whole way back to the store to properly store the cart then 15 spots back to your car. Thank God handicap toilets aren’t handicap only.
Half a mile? The horror!!!
Jason, the restraint you showed here vis-a-vis Tag application is noble. Remarkable, even. Kudos!
(…Although I was hoping for “Stupid” and “Weird,” and even dared to hope for “Self-Own.”)
My bride and joy is now mobility-challenged. She uses a walker around the house, but for any longer distance to walk (store/dinner/doctor) we put her in a travel wheel chair (A little smaller than a regular wheel chair, it has smaller castor wheels and is meant to be pushed by someone, She can’t roll it on her own). If we are going out, I’m going with her. If I’m going with her, I’m helping her get in/out of the Ioniq / Mav (both with hanging straps she can grab and hoist herself onto the seat) or even the Miata. I am going to fold up and put the travel chair in the back. Even if she could do it, it would be awkward and dangerous for her to then try to get move to and get into the seat unassisted. .
Since I am with her, there’s no freaking need for a taxi.. cyber or other wise. There’s no way she could, on her own, get into one of these freaky beta test cabs.
Anther gigantic F.U. to Muskrat. I really didn’t need another reason to hate that a#$^@(#, but damn if this piece of crap doesn’t pile it on even more.
“Bride and joy.” Beautiful.
Why do they do this to themselves? Because the company is run by somebody with questionable decision-making abilities
Eh, it’s way less impressive when you consider how hacky and hastily Tesla launched FSD with the goal of lying to the public about it’s abilities
I wouldn’t trust one of these.
Tesla’s don’t even have grab handles, as if they care about anyone with mobility issues. Getting in and out of a Model 3 sucks without them, given how low and small the door opening is.
But hey, in the infinite wisdom of Technoking Musk “the best part is no part.”
At this point, I’m counting down to the day that Tesla ends up under Stellantis. Maybe they’ll finally start making better vehicles that make more sense.
Stellantis better? That would be a shock. Actually maybe they can make an electric Jeep that actually runs.
I will say that the big flaw with the MV-1’s arrangement is that it assumes that the space required to open the side ramp into will always be clear and not filled by someone who squeezed their car onto the painted diagonal lines because they just have to run into the store for this one quick thing
To be fair, I’m pretty sure the MV-1 was primarily marketed as a taxi, so it wouldn’t really see much use in parking lots. For parking lots, a rear loader seems to make more sense. I believe that’s the only configuration offered for Toyota’s factory-built JDM wheelchair vans, since you can probably imagine how bad a side loader would be in Japan if it’s already this bad in the US.
No, the development started out as a taxi, when it was known as the Standard Taxi, however, when it was redesigned and put into production as the VPG MV-1, they pivoted their marketing to primarily private owners with taxis as a secondary market, that’s how the majority of them were sold. But, the ones that did go into taxi fleets were the ones that cropped up on the used market much sooner
Interesting. Perhaps they still leaned heavily on the taxi marketing here in Canada, as the vast majority I’ve seen up here were taxis. The only exception I’ve seen is local to me, and even it is owned and operated by a limo company.
At some point, the money behind Vehicle Production Group determined that the private owner market was potentially larger and more profitable than the market for purpose built cabs, so they decided that was smarter to focus on, the MV-1 was still pretty darn homely, but the redesign into that from the even more, um, *utilitarian* looking Standard Taxi was supposed to make it more visually acceptable to consumers. Of course, you could also order it with chrome wheels and upgraded metallic paint finishes and stuff to make it seem even less fleet-like
Do you know how well these sold stateside? All I know is that even after the redesign, it still looks like a commercial vehicle, and I’m pretty sure it was more expensive than something like a Toyota Sienna conversion for the average private owner to justify.
Not well at all, they were a huge flop. I mean, the company went bankrupt and got taken over by AM General just to prevent a major customer of theirs from disappearing and leaving their factory empty, but they couldn’t make a go of it either and eventually shut things down.
Aside from the looks (which, yeah, of course wheelchair users are going to favor something that looks more like a normal minivan than the result of a tryst between a Honda Element and a city bus), they were also pretty expensive (despite the initial claim that they would be cheaper than a van conversion) and the build quality wasn’t all that great, plus dealer support was nonexistent. Even though they used a lot of off-the-shelf partsbin stuff, you still had to go somewhere for warranty work and whatnot, and that wasn’t great. Plus, few real dealerships and that side ramp.
I believe total production was less than 5,000 all years, VPG sold about 2,500 or so before they folded, and AM General did the rest through their Mobility Ventures subsidiary
I used to follow the taxi business a bit (I’ve owned two Checker Marathons) and my understanding is that taxi fleet operators balked at the price of the MV-1, hence the pivot to other markets as mentioned above. Where I live there are a couple running shuttle service at a university hospital, which seems to suit them well.
The redesign didn’t get rid of technical flubs stemming from the taxi-minded development like putting the fuse box under the driver’s seat, from where it’d have to be relocated if someone needed to drive from their wheelchair.
They also never came out with the front passenger seat option they had talked about, because that would have required adding a passenger side airbag, which was too expensive. But, they did add a sort of sketchy looking rear-facing folding jumpseat to the back of the driver’s seat, which NHTSA was totally fine with as an alternative
Maybe we just witnessed a miracle and the guy can suddenly walk again! Then instead of joyfully dancing off down the street as one might expect, this guy decides, “no, I should keep the chair.” “What if the miracle wears off or something?” he wonders. “If not, I can sell this bad boy to some chump on Craigslist!” he exclaims!
I witnessed a miracle like that once. We were flying to Europe and 8 people boarded early because they were in wheelchairs.
Jesus must have touched us as we were flying because every single one of them got up and walked off at the end of the flight.
There’s a wide range of need for wheelchairs and you can’t assume you have to be a paraplegic to use one. For example:
* people with limited mobility (bad back, bad leg, chronic fatigue, etc) at YYZ, with a solid kilometer between the front door and the gates
* people with MS
* people recovering from surgery
* people on their way to surgery
* old people with osteoporosis
Having to deal with wheelchair access in airports is a pain in the butt and nobody does it for fun or out of laziness.
Try a little empathy and fewer assumptions.
I’m not one to defend anything Tesla related, but the guy putting the wheelchair in the trunk is not the same guy sitting in it. Unless, of course, he changed shirts during his miracle cure.
It sure looks like the same pinstriped button-down shirt to me? I zoomed in to be sure I can see the stripes in both. I think it’s the same.
I can’t actually watch the video because I don’t have an account on X dot com the everything app, so I could be obviously and hilariously mistaken, but I have to think any Tesla employee or contractor who suggested using actual human actors on an actual physical set for something like this would be fired immediately.
I dunno man. Guy in wheelchair looks like a plain white shirt to me.
https://i.ibb.co/yjLTV31/image.png
But the guy loading it is definitely a blue/white checked shirt.
https://i.ibb.co/LhbbZgWs/image.png
I’m not gonna die on that hill, though.
They do it because it is Tesla, owned and operated by Leon who could not give a flying F about a person with a real disability and hires ad agencies that miss the entire brief every time. It’s a joke, but it also denigrating to those with a real disability to call something like this accessible.
Are we sure the guy doesn’t work for a wheelchair dealership and is simply delivering or bring back a trade-in? He’s just making full use of the product instead of using his legs like a sucker.
“Grok, make an ad about how good Robotaxi is for wheelchair people.”
Yeah, that missing middle step is pretty important.
But at least now we have solid proof that Tesla is run by the Underpants Gnomes…
So beyond the dumb premise of the advertisement, their selling point is that this cab has a trunk? Holy innovation, Batman. Give Leon another trillion dollars, stat!!
Honestly, there’s going to be people circle jerking about that on Tesla owners forums right now. I swear, some of those people act like they’ve never owned or driven another car before the way they fawn over even mundane features like they’re traces of Musk’s genius. Honestly, probably the same people who think Steve Jobs invented smart phones and mp3 players
This is definitely equivalent to tech bros advertising robots as “With robots, you won’t need a roommate in your apartment to help you do chores!”
That’s not why people have roommates…
In fact roommates often lead to more chores, if your standards are higher than the roommate’s standards.
In the entire life, all the roommates I’ve ever had, none of them have done chores
Truth. I solved the problem with hired help.
Oh come now. We all know that at least 93% of the people rollong around in wheelchairs are just being lazy. They can walk, they just choose not to. In fact, they’re the bad ones here, always inconveniencing people with their bulky conveyances!
(Joking, just in case it’s not obvious.)
Tesla, Pandering to the dishonest part of the population that purposefully fakes a disability to get special treatment in their daily lives.
I’m assuming these will all come with handicap plates and will consume the closest parking spaces availible.
Obviously the ‘safety monitor’ in the driver’s seat will load the wheelchair, just like the current Robotaxis.
I see cybercabs all the time… being driven manually with the steering wheel.
Example number 513 of “tech bros only think about themselves”.
I for one am shocked that the car company owned by Elon Musk is displaying a lack of empathy towards the disadvantaged.
From the get-go I have thought this is the stupidest physical form-factor design for a cab. There’s a reason why London Taxis and minivans work. I won’t even go into the details, but just one look at this thing any body who’s dealt with frail or declining elderly parents knows this car’s faults. It only seats 2, and it’s basically designed for fit healthy people aged 18 to 32.
I responded to the article posted here recently about the JDM Toyota Crown taxi that won a prize at The Quail that earlier this year I visited Japan for the first time, and for the sake of being a car guy I made it a point to take Toyota Crown Comfort taxis when I could, but I cannot deny that the Toyota JPN Taxi is way more comfortable and practical for its job.
Love the Crown Comfort. I could totally daily something like it. We need more no-bullshit cars.
This is the level of what I expect out of Tesla honestly. As if they give a shit about disabled people.
Between robot taxis and AI, Tesla has gifted this man so much free time that he taught himself to walk again.
Seems like one of those ‘best to keep your mouth shut, son’ moments