Tesla Q3: Cybercab sales this year, unsupervised FSD in 2027

Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday was less about the cars it sells today and more about the ones it promises for tomorrow. The company said it will begin selling the Cybercab to customers by the end of this year, gave a new date for unsupervised Full Self-Driving (Q2 2027), and reported a sharp fall in profit. Here is what was announced, based on reporting from TechCrunch, Electrek and Ars Technica.

Cybercab goes on sale, slowly

The Cybercab is Tesla’s gold-coloured autonomous two-seater with no steering wheel or pedals. Lars Moravy, Tesla’s vice president of engineering, said every Cybercab built so far goes into Tesla’s own robotaxi fleet. As that fleet grows, Tesla will “mainly deliver fully designed autonomous vehicles to our customers”, starting with small numbers and scaling up as it learns how delivery, ownership and fleet management work.

Elon Musk framed the car as a ride-hailing machine rather than something most people would own, saying “the vast majority” of Cybercabs will be Tesla-owned and offered as transport as a service.

There is a regulatory hurdle. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into the Cybercab last month, hours after it began running on public roads in Austin. Federal motor vehicle safety standards still require manual controls such as brake pedals, as well as mirrors, and the outcome could affect whether anyone can legally operate the car.

Unsupervised FSD: Q2 2027, inside Robotaxi zones

Owners who paid for Full Self-Driving got another new date. Ashok Elluswamy, who leads Tesla’s AI software, said: “We suspect somewhere around Q2 next year is when we can turn on some of the first customer vehicles to be part of the robotaxi fleet.” In April, Musk had said the unsupervised version would “probably” arrive in Q4 2026.

As Electrek points out, the plan is narrower than the original pitch: customer cars would drive themselves only as part of Tesla’s managed network, inside its existing service areas. The Robotaxi service runs in six US metro areas today, mostly in limited zones, and still uses safety drivers in the Bay Area. Tesla says the fleet reached nearly 2 million cumulative unsupervised miles by the end of Q3. If you are weighing up driver-assistance claims, our story on Tesla’s latest FSD Supervised update and the Waymo Madrid robotaxi plan show how differently the two companies are rolling out.

The numbers

• Revenue: $28.04 billion, almost unchanged from $28.09 billion a year earlier.
• Deliveries: 486,532 vehicles, about 6,000 more than in Q2 but fewer than a year ago.
• Energy: solar and storage revenue fell 16%, which Tesla blamed on tariff-related customer refunds.
• Services and other: up 33% to $4.6 billion, with record gross profit of $734 million.
• Net income: $787 million, down 43% from $1.37 billion, as operating expenses rose 39% and regulatory credit sales fell to $113 million.

Tesla also said production of its Optimus humanoid robot has started at its Fremont factory. Musk called it early production and said the ramp will be “bumpy”, while claiming Tesla could make 20,000 robots a week by the end of 2027.

For most drivers the practical takeaway is unchanged: today’s Teslas still need an attentive human. If you are buying an EV now, our home EV charger guide matters more than any autonomy roadmap.