Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company is still on track to deliver a Cybercab to a customer by the end of 2026 and on Friday he answered Marques Brownlee’s restated head-shave wager in one line. “I guess he really wants to shave his head.” The line circulated in a video clip on X after Brownlee posted a new YouTube video on Thursday and after Tesla added the two-seat robotaxi to its Austin ride-hailing service.
Musk restates year-end delivery goal
In mid-February Musk replied “Yes” when asked if Tesla would sell the Cybercab to consumers this year for $30,000 and he later wrote “Gonna happen :D” after the first unit left the line at Gigafactory Texas on February 17. Tesla-focused accounts including Nic Cruz Patane treated that exchange as a pledge to deliver a Cybercab for personal use at $30,000 or less by the end of 2026 and Musk’s replies did not walk it back. On Tesla’s Q1 2026 earnings call he said “We have just started production of Cybercab” and told investors “You should expect that initial production of Cybercab and Semi will be very slow, but then ramping up and going kind of exponential towards the end of the year.” He has described early Cybercab and Optimus output as “agonizingly slow” and Tesla reported first-quarter profit of $477 million the same week production was confirmed.
MKBHD keeps the head-shave bet
The wager started at Tesla’s “We, Robot” event in October 2024 when Musk presented Cybercab as a $30,000 robotaxi and Brownlee called the timeline “notorious Elon stuff.” He said then “I’ll shave my head on camera because I’m that confident” if Tesla delivered a Cybercab to a consumer for $30,000 or less before 2027. After the first factory unit appeared in February Tesla fans posted AI images of a bald MKBHD and accounts kept the bet in circulation. Brownlee has since restated the terms. He said he will shave his head if Cybercab is delivered as a production vehicle by the end of 2026 rather than as a limited Robotaxi option inside Austin and he added a counter-wager: “If they don’t, tag me if you take me up on it – and you shave your head.” In an 11-minute video posted Thursday he said “My hair is safe, for now.” He then said “And honestly, I feel pretty good about it staying good for the rest of the year.” He set a clock on the claim with “Three months to prove me wrong.” If he loses he said he will shave his head and donate money to cancer research and if the Tesla side loses he said those takers shave at the end of 2026.
Tesla held an invite-only Cybercab event in Austin on Thursday September 3 and guests took the first public passenger trips that evening. The company said paying riders in a limited Austin zone could hail Cybercab through the existing Robotaxi app starting Friday at 5 p.m. CT.
Musk told investors in April that Tesla wants Robotaxi in “a dozen or so states” by year-end and he said “The limiting factor for expansion is really rigorous validation.” Cybercab itself is Austin-only for now. Tesla removed safety monitors from some driverless Model Ys in Austin earlier this year.
FSD v15 is not on customer-owned Tesla cars. Reuters reported in August that Tesla told staff the rollout would start with employee rides on public roads and then move into the Austin robotaxi service. A Tesla Semi was filmed leaving Gigafactory Texas with Cybercab units in May and the Nevada Transportation Authority approved Tesla’s Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit that month for up to 5,000 driverless vehicles in Clark County over 12 months. Tesla Asia said Cybercab will be on display this month in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai. Those stops have been described as static displays rather than a service launch.
Pilot production began in February 2026 and Tesla has said volume production started in April with an elongated S-curve ramp. Tesla vice president Lars Moravy said NHTSA’s 2,500-vehicle annual exemption cap does not apply when asked on X and his answer was “No.” Tesla has said Cybercab is meant to self-certify against Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards so it can scale without that ceiling. Four months remain in 2026. Tesla said the Robotaxi fleet has reached 1 million unsupervised autonomous miles.
Price volume and sales path
Musk’s public target remains a Cybercab sold to a customer for $30,000 or less by the end of 2026 and some Tesla-focused reports have circulated a $25,000 starting price. Tesla has not published a full consumer MSRP. Ark Invest has used an $18,000 figure as a landed production-cost estimate not a sticker price. On the October 23, 2024 investor call Tesla said it was aiming for volume production by the end of 2026 and an annual rate of 2 million Cybercabs when several factories are at full design capacity. At the November 2025 shareholder meeting Musk said production would begin in the second quarter of 2026.
On the Q1 call Musk said Tesla was holding Robotaxi growth until a rewritten FSD v15 arrives with a target of late 2026 or early 2027. Tesla still has no public consumer configurator for Cybercab. Brownlee said Tesla would need to solve full self-driving clear rules on a car without conventional controls and hit the price in a few months. Musk is treating that list as a deadline he expects to meet. Brownlee is treating it as a deadline he expects Tesla to miss.
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