Tesla’s Cybercab is coming to Auckland, but only to look at

Tesla will bring the Cybercab to Auckland in 2027 as part of an Australia and New Zealand tour that starts in Sydney on 21 September, giving the public its first look at the two-seat vehicle built without a steering wheel or pedals.

The Australian leg runs through Brisbane and the Gold Coast and Canberra in October, Melbourne and Adelaide in November, and Perth in December, with Auckland following in 2027. Tesla says locations and dates are yet to be confirmed and subject to change.

The company is explicit that this is a showcase rather than a local robotaxi launch. What visitors can use today is the software: Tesla is inviting people at tour stops to book test drives of Full Self-Driving (Supervised) in the Model 3 and Model Y, which New Zealand and Australia were the first right-hand drive markets in the world to receive.

“Cybercab is the destination. Model 3 and Model Y are how Australians and New Zealanders get there today,” says Tesla country director Thom Drew. “When people see Cybercab at our locations, we want them to understand they are looking at the future of the same autonomous technology they can already experience with Full Self Driving (Supervised).”

The Cybercab has a two-passenger cabin, dihedral doors, no conventional controls, and wireless inductive charging rather than a plug. It runs the same camera-based Tesla Vision hardware fitted to the Model 3 and Model Y, which is the argument Tesla is making with the tour.

New Zealanders have seen the car before, if not up close: Cybercabs arrived here for Southern Hemisphere winter testing in June and one was photographed on a public road in July. The vehicle entered passenger service in Austin earlier this month, where Tesla has registered 45 of them within a Texas robotaxi fleet of about 420 vehicles.

No autonomous ride service has been proposed for New Zealand, where driverless operation sits outside the current rules, and FSD remains a supervised system here with the driver responsible at all times. The tour is the second Tesla showcase on the calendar for the coming months, after the Roadster reveal set for 1 October.