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Can Tesla\u2019s Cybercab Share the Road with America\u2019s Myth of the Highway?<\/p>\n
For more than a century, cars have meant freedom, escape and self-reinvention to Americans. Now Tesla\u2019s forthcoming Cybercab makes us ask whether we can have the romance of the open road without actually driving it<\/p>\n
By Deni Ellis B\u00e9chard edited by Dean Visser<\/span><\/p>\n A prototype of the Tesla Cybercab is displayed at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, California, on December 3, 2024. The 2-Door, 2-Seater is intended to be a fully autonomous vehicle with no need for a steering wheel or pedals and is expected to be available in the US in 2026.<\/p>\n Frederic J. Brown\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n In the American psyche, the automobile\u2014that great democratizer of distance\u2014has always been about more than transportation. It\u2019s freedom incarnate: the ability to leave and become someone new three states over. It\u2019s James Dean smoking a cigarette, leaning against a fender\u2014masculinity codified in chrome and horsepower, sexuality expressed through gear ratios and exhaust notes. It\u2019s Thelma and Louise escaping not just their dreary lives but all that\u2019s wrong with their culture. We\u2019ve had the Corvette, the Mustang, the Charger, the Eldorado, the Camaro, the Thunderbird\u2014and soon we will have the Cybercab.<\/p>\n Elon Musk revealed the Cybercab prototype last October, with production targeted for 2026, and today a convoy of 10 to 20 Model Y robotaxis has begun paving the way for its launch, testing the safety of Tesla\u2019s autonomous driving tech on a geofenced loop in Austin, Texas. But the Cybercab stands out in the emerging genealogy of robotaxis. Whereas the motto of Amazon subsidiary Zoox\u2019s robotaxi\u2014which resembles a cross between an art deco toaster and a subway carriage\u2014is \u201cIt\u2019s not a car,\u201d the Cybercab, for all its streamlined science-fiction minimalism, remains squarely in car territory: a sleek two-seater with butterfly doors\u2014the unmistakable hallmarks of a glamorous ride. Yet there\u2019s no wheel to grip, no gas pedal to stomp to the floor. The shape of the car says you can still escape your life, but now AI does the driving. The promise might seem seductive: all the mobility; none of the responsibility.<\/p>\n More than a century after the first Model T shipped for $825 in 1908 (nearly $29,000 today), we\u2019ve forgotten how quickly and profoundly car ownership changed American culture. In 1900 fewer than 1 percent of American households owned cars. By 1913 Henry Ford\u2019s moving-belt assembly line cut build time to 93 minutes, and cheap Texas oil kept the tank full, turning personal mobility from luxury to the default setting. A 1927 survey found that 55.7 percent of American families owned at least one car.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n Not until 1926, however, did the American myth of the highway truly boot up, when Route 66\u2014John Steinbeck named it the \u201cMother Road\u201d in The Grapes of Wrath\u2014linked Chicago and Santa Monica, Calif. In the book Hip to the Trip, historian Peter Dedek called the route \u201ca pillar of mid-twentieth-century automobile culture,\u201d a corridor where vacationers, beatniks, cowboys and Okies fleeing the dust bowl contributed to myths of freedom and transformation. Photographer Robert Frank revealed in his 1958 book The Americans how windshield glass turned travelers into both spectator and exhibit. The cars that Frank famously depicted were as much social containers as machines. Robin Reisenfeld, who curated the Toledo Museum of Art\u2019s exhibition Life Is a Highway: Art and American Car Culture, argued in an interview with Antiques and the Arts Weekly that \u201cthe automobile has defined our society\u201d and been used as \u201ca means of self-expression and status and identity.\u201d<\/p>\n After World War II, the G.I. Bill financed suburban mortgages, so millions fled dense cities. And in 1956 the Federal-Aid Highway Act funded 41,000 miles of interstate\u2014an asphalt backbone justified as civil defense infrastructure but experienced as a coast-to-coast permission slip for self-reinvention. The tail fins and chrome of the late 1950s signaled cold war optimism, while Jack Kerouac\u2019s 1957 novel On the Road and Chuck Berry\u2019s 1958 song \u201cJohnny B. Goode\u201d hard-coded the romance of endless motion into the culture\u2019s firmware. Yet the myth of the open road has always been about who\u2019s in the driver\u2019s seat. The driver is king: one hand on the wheel, eyes on the horizon, free to turn down that dusty side road on a whim. Control over one\u2019s vehicle equated to control over one\u2019s destiny. Cars changed the sound of our music, with rock guitars emulating the roaring of engines, and they changed how we courted, providing not just a means of transportation but also a destination, allowing couples to get away from \u201cporch swings, parlor sofas, hovering mothers, and pesky siblings,\u201d as historian David L. Lewis explained in his Michigan Quarterly Review article \u201cSex and the Automobile: From Rumble Seats to Rockin\u2019 Vans.\u201d A number of films, such as Drive-In (1976), Grease (1978) and American Drive-In (1985), depicted cars as popular places for trysts.<\/p>\n The highway lore, however, was never without critics, and the choice of the word \u201cking\u201d (followed by \u201cof the road,\u201d for example) was not accidental. Men were predominantly at the wheel, and even as highways offered freedom, they carved concrete canyons through neighborhoods, separating communities. Public transportation didn\u2019t keep pace to help those without cars cross ever larger distances between home and work or to accommodate those with disabilities or older people. Studies have since revealed the scope of corporate efforts to dismantle public transit systems and thus encourage car ownership. In 1998 architecture critic Jane Holtz Kay wrote in the book Asphalt Nation that \u201cmobility has vanished completely for the third of the nation that cannot legally drive\u2014those 80 million Americans who do not operate automobiles because they are too old, too young, or too poor.\u201d A 2012 Brookings report found that in the 100 largest U.S. metro areas, the typical job could be reached by transit within 90 minutes by only 27 percent of workers.<\/p>\n In many ways, debates around robotaxis have flipped the narrative. Critics say they reduce personal agency while writing us into an information network against our will (though simply carrying a smartphone does this well enough), whereas defenders argue that autonomous vehicles could offer freedom to the very groups who benefitted least under the car kings of yore. Those with disabilities and older people might find work and community more easily, or they might simply experience more: stare out at that far highway horizon and go wherever. A 2017 report estimated that autonomous vehicles could allow two million individuals with disabilities to enter the workforce, and it highlighted a potential annual savings of $19 billion in health care expenditures as a result of fewer missed medical appointments. Robotaxis could even offer freedom from the grueling commute, the exhausting hours spent jockeying in traffic, and allow naps or Netflix bingeing, time to answer e-mails or\u2014for a couple or a parent and child\u2014time to talk and connect. A 2023 study in Frontiers in Future Transportation and another from 2020 in Sensors recorded lower stress levels in autonomous vehicle passengers. One might argue that ride-sharing already provides similar freedoms to those offered by robotaxis, but drivers for hire can be tired, cranky or in a rush, and there\u2019s a social dynamic and a rating system, which can limit other freedoms\u2014even one as simple as the desire to be quiet with one\u2019s thoughts.<\/p>\n The Cybercab may look like a miniature sportscar dipped in sci-fi, but the engine\u2019s roar has been replaced with silence, and the inside is spacious. There will no doubt be glitches and accidents heaped with media coverage. Yet the car will likely obey speed limits, never get drowsy or drunk and never rubberneck or give in to road rage. With robotaxis, more teenagers may arrive home safely and more grandparents may set out on the adventure of a lifetime. As for design, there will always be disagreement; the very concept of aesthetics invites debate, and our sensitivity to fashions are often deeply entwined with the politics of change and the people in power.<\/p>\n The greatest challenge facing autonomous vehicles, however, will likely be public opinion. A recent poll of 8,000 Americans conducted by the market research initiative Electric Vehicle Intelligence Report found that 71 percent of the respondents were unwilling to ride in robotaxis and that 43 percent thought they should be illegal. Yet recent research shows different numbers after people have ridden in autonomous vehicles. A 2021 report on a pilot of an autonomous shuttle service in Utah found that 95 percent of surveyed riders had more positive views toward the technology and that 98 percent said they felt safe. And as adoption rises, prices are anticipated to fall. Whereas Goldman Sachs Research estimated that the driving costs of robotaxis were $3.13 per mile in 2024, it expected that number to drop below $1 by 2030 and to reach 58 cents by 2040. A 2022 McKinsey & Company analysis expected a more than 50 percent drop in robotaxis\u2019 costs per mile between 2025 and 2030. Though robotaxis are currently more expensive than traditional ride-hailing services in the U.S., last year a Chinese state media outlet reported that a robotaxi available in Wuhan, China, could be up to 87 percent cheaper than a standard hailed ride.<\/p>\n As for the myth of the highway, if you\u2019re craving the freedom to outrun a thunderstorm or race through an amber light, take an impromptu detour down a country lane or make an unplanned stop at a \u201clast chance\u201d diner, conventional cars will remain part of American culture as a hobby, just as people still ride horses for pleasure. But we may see new narratives arise. The road trip movie of the future may feature two friends in a Cybercab arguing over which streaming service to watch until they realize the true meaning of their journey. And maybe the next Kerouac will write a novel on their laptop as an autonomous car carries them across the continent. With its wide windshield, the Cybercab appears suited to the highway, and it may end up being as much a means of transportation as a destination. In brief, the car itself may become the drive-in theater.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Can Tesla\u2019s Cybercab Share the Road with America\u2019s Myth of the Highway? For more than a century, cars have meant freedom, escape and self-reinvention to Americans. Now Tesla\u2019s forthcoming Cybercab makes us ask whether we can have the romance of the open road without actually driving it By Deni Ellis B\u00e9chard edited by Dean Visser<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[1378,1375,91,1380,1372,1371,1379,1377,1373,1376,1374],"class_list":{"0":"post-9286","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-americas","9":"tag-cybercab","10":"tag-elon","11":"tag-highway","12":"tag-launches","13":"tag-musk","14":"tag-myth","15":"tag-road","16":"tag-robotaxican","17":"tag-share","18":"tag-teslas"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n