The Tesla Cybercab is meant to be an autonomous vehicle. The fact that it doesn’t have a steering wheel or pedals is a testament to Tesla’s commitment to its self-driving capability. But it’s not quite there yet, at least not in every situation.
Tesla is currently lending the Cybercab to the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, which published a video starring Tesla lead designer Franz von Holzhausen giving a tour of the vehicle and talking about some of its features and design inspirations. The Petersen Museum posted another short video on Instagram showing the Tesla Cybercab arriving at the exhibit under its own power. But, there’s a person inside, and sources have told Autoevolution that the car was being operated by that human from inside the vehicle via a controller.
Like An Xbox Controller
According to the report, sources said the person in the Cybercab was driving it using what looked like an Xbox controller. It was connected to the car via a wire, but it can also be controlled wirelessly, and from outside the vehicle, reportedly.
It makes sense that there would be a human controlling the Cybercab in an instance like this. It’s not a public roadway that is mapped by GPS with obvious lane markings. Nobody expects a self-driving car to be able to autonomously navigate obstacles like temporary ramps inside a museum.
And there are situations in the real world where a human might have to take control of the Cybercab. Whether it’s an unforeseen obstacle or traffic situation, or a regulatory environment requiring a safety driver, it’s important there is some way to manually operate the Cybercab. As we reported earlier, Tesla is looking to use remote drivers for such situations where one is necessary, but it appears it can be handled from inside the car as well. We don’t know what sort of interface those remote operators would use, but driving it with a game controller would only come naturally to folks who grew up playing video games.
A New Look At The Tesla Cybercab
While we’ve seen the Cybercab in a few videos now, this one is a little different, showing us a couple of things we haven’t seen before. For one thing, we see it in motion navigating a tiny portion of the real world. It cautiously crept over the transition from street to driveway, and eventually up a set of ramps onto the floor of the museum. The whole time, it has its hazard lights flashing. Also, there’s something about seeing the car in motion that makes the lack of a rear window feel a little more jarring.
But, we also get to see the Cybercab without its gold wheel covers. Instead, it bears its five-spoke rims, and red rear brake calipers. There’s a sort of whitewall on the wheels, but in the same gold as the exterior paint — goldwall wheels? — and it actually looks pretty good. In the other video from Petersen, Von Holzhausen said Tesla picked the gold wheel covers for both aerodynamics, and to help make the wheels visually disappear. Maybe Tesla should consider showing them off, instead.
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