June 20, 2026
Tesla’s Cybercab returned 165 watt-hours per mile in EPA testing, the lowest figure the agency has on record for a production vehicle and roughly 28% under the next car on the list, the Lucid Air Pure. The numbers came out of EPA test group TTSLV00.0L1A, approved May 26 and reported this month, and they arrived with the first full set of production specs for the purpose-built robotaxi Tesla has been promising since 2024.
The rest of the filing reads the same way. Its 47.6 kWh pack, small for a Tesla, returns 418 miles unadjusted, about 293 on the EPA’s corrected scale. Curb weight comes in at 3,113 pounds, close to 900 under a Model 3 Long Range. Power runs to the front wheels, which Tesla has never done in a production car, through a single 163 kilowatt motor rated at 219 horsepower. Two seats, no more.
What the numbers are built for
A vehicle meant to run more than 100,000 miles a year lives on energy cost per mile and parts wear, not on zero-to-sixty. Every figure in the filing serves that math. A lighter car at lower power pulls less energy and chews through tires and brakes slower. A 47.6 kWh battery is cheaper to build and quicker to refill than the 75-plus kWh packs in Tesla’s consumer cars, and an urban robotaxi circling a metro rarely needs more range. Front-wheel drive strips out cost and a driveshaft for a duty cycle that never sees a back road. None of it would sell a retail Tesla. All of it lowers the per-mile cost of a fleet.
The approval it still doesn’t have
On May 26 the EPA signed off on the Cybercab’s emissions, and that is the whole of what it signed off on. Certification lets Tesla introduce the car into commerce; it says nothing about the car driving itself, which is the entire point of a vehicle with no steering wheel and no pedals. Tesla self-certified the system to SAE Level 4 in Texas in late May and widened its Austin robotaxi zone to the full metro on June 3, but self-certification is not the same as a regulator clearing driverless operation, and no jurisdiction has done that for this car. Production began at Giga Texas in April. The hardware is built and certified; the legal right to run it without a driver is not, anywhere yet.
The question the spec sheet sets up
Waymo runs the only paid driverless service at US scale, on a converted Jaguar and a sixth-generation Geely-built car that each cost far more per unit than a vehicle Tesla designed from scratch to be cheap. Pulling the driver out of a ride erases the largest cost in the fare, and the Cybercab’s efficiency and low build cost aim straight at translating that into a price Waymo cannot match. Whether it works turns entirely on the approval Tesla does not have. Building a cheap, efficient robotaxi was the solvable problem. Convincing each city to let it run without a driver is the one still open.
