Gail’s Tesla Podcast Episode 188: I Sat Inside a Cybercab

September 3, 2026 — Austin, Texas

Episode 188 is the day I sat inside a Tesla Cybercab.

No steering wheel. No pedals. Just joy.

Thank you, Elon. The future is real, and it is this beautiful.

This episode was filmed on Cybercab launch day in Austin. I climbed into the two-seater, looked at that empty dash with the CYBERCAB script across it, and felt something I have been waiting years to feel in person: a car built from the ground up for riding, not driving.

Watch Episode 188 here:

Gail’s Tesla Podcast Ep. 188
I sat inside a Cybercab at Austin Fairgrounds today.
No wheel. no pedals. Just joy.
Thank you Elon. The future is real and it is this beautiful ♥️ pic.twitter.com/SZpaTIUnsO
— Gail Alfar (@gailalfaratx) September 3, 2026

Sitting Where the Wheel Used to Be

I have taken a lot of unsupervised Robotaxi rides in Model Ys here in Austin. Those rides already feel like history. This was different.

Cybercab is not a regular Tesla with the driver controls left unused. There is nothing left unused. The front of the cabin is open. The seats face a clean interior, a wide screen, and that little CYBERCAB mark where a steering wheel would have been for more than a century.

I was wearing my I ❤️ ELON shirt and red pants, sunglasses on, gold nails catching the Texas light, and I kept reaching out to touch things the way you do when your brain is still catching up with your eyes. The leatherlike seats. The cupholders. The speaker grille. The simple controls on the door. Every detail said: this vehicle was designed for people, not for a person who has to keep a hand near a wheel.

My daughter Grace sat beside me. Two seats. That is the whole cabin. It feels intimate and calm, like the car already knows the job is to carry you, not to ask you to work.

What the Video Shows

Episode 188 is short on purpose. About three and a half minutes. I wanted you to sit there with me.

You will see:

The first look from outside, with the cabin inset so you can see the empty dash and the Cybercab lettering
The two of us buckled in, laughing, taking in a vehicle with no driver controls at all
Close looks at the seats, cupholders, door controls, and speakers
Downtown Austin moving past the windows while the cabin stays quiet and bright
That last beat of me sitting there, hand on my face, trying to put a feeling into words

I did not need a long speech. The car is the speech.

Why This One Matters

For years I have covered Tesla Full Self-Driving, unsupervised Robotaxi rides in Model Ys, and the promise of a purpose-built robotaxi. Episode 188 is the moment that promise became a seat I could sit in.

Model Y Robotaxi proved the software on streets I actually use. Cybercab is the next chapter: a vehicle that does not pretend a human might grab the wheel. That absence is not a missing feature. It is the point.

Launch day in Austin was noisy in the best way with people circling the gold two-seaters, phones up, lambo doors up, the feeling that the city had just been handed a new kind of gold Roman chariot. I wanted this episode to keep the human part. As a woman from Austin sitting in the car and telling you the truth: it made me happy.

If you have followed this podcast from the early FSD drives through the unsupervised Robotaxi rides, this is one of the episodes we were driving toward.

Watch Next

Episode 189 was filmed entirely inside a Cybercab here in Austin with Grok answering fast, a simulated job-interview coaching moment, and Ashok Elluswamy from Cybercab launch day. Episode 188 is the sit-down. Episode 189 is the ride that follows.