Tesla's Cybercab is coming to Perth

Tesla’s fully self-driving robotaxi, the Cybercab, has embarked on an Australian tour that is expected to arrive in Perth in December.

Believed to be the first public appearance of the electric vehicle (EV) in the Southern Hemisphere, the sleek gold car will spend several days in seven cities around the country as a static showcase of the technology.

Enthusiasts and media in Sydney attended displays in Chatswood and Parramatta in September and October, with the Cybercab then due to head to Brisbane and Gold Coast, Canberra during October, Melbourne and Adelaide in November, before finishing its tour in Perth.

Dates and location have yet to be announced for the Perth event but Tesla has outlets in O’Connor and Osborne Park, and a pop-up showroom at Westfield Carousel in Cannington.

Australian federal and state governments are collaborating on regulatory frameworks to allow trials of robotaxis, which can have road safety benefits as human errors are mitigated. But the technology will also need to convince the community to be successful; RAC surveys over several years have shown members are increasingly negative about driverless vehicles.

About the size of a Toyota Corolla, the Cybercab is a fully self-driving two-seater hatchback with a 163kW single electric motor, scissor doors that open upwards and no steering wheel or pedal controls.

Given many regions across the world still require physical controls in fully self-driving vehicles to allow a human to take over driving if needed, the lack of those features in the Cybercab could be an obstacle.

Aerodynamically sculptured to be as efficient as possible, the Cybercab consumes just 10.3kWh of electricity per 100km. To put that in perspective, most equivalently sized EVs use power at a rate of at least 50 per cent more than that.

The Cybercab’s radical appearance is the brainchild of Tesla designer, Franz von Holzhausen, who has been with the company for nearly 20 years. He is responsible for the styling of all its vehicles, including the Model Y SUV and Cybertruck ute, as well as the elegant Model S (no longer manufactured in right-hand-drive configuration for markets like Australia).

Unveiled to the world two years ago in prototype form, the Cybercab has been in limited production at Tesla’s complex in Austin, Texas, since the start of this year. The vehicle is operating as a robotaxi in limited areas of that city.

Other sites in America and beyond are rumoured to be in the running, should it receive the green light for commercial use.

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (a federal government agency focused on road and vehicle safety) announced last month that it would audit Tesla's self-certification that the Cybercab complies with standards.

Its concerns centre around the fully self-driving technologies where a manual override by the occupant is not possible, due to the absence of a steering wheel and pedals. Other operators of robotaxis in the US, such as the steering wheel-free Zoox unit, have approved exemptions.

According to The Independent, Tesla has said human operators would monitor the vehicles remotely and could intervene and take control of the car “in rare cases” as a last resort.