The Cybercab Trojan Horse

Tesla Cybercab - Image: Tesla

Tesla unveiled the Cybercab at their 10/10 event. It's a 2-seater with a large rear cargo area and no steering wheel or pedals. During the event, Elon Musk announced the Cybercar would be in volume production in 2026.

Musk has a nearly decade-long history of overly optimistic predictions related to self-driving. Cybercab, as revealed, can only be released once autonomy is solved.*

Self-driving is a "long tail" or "march of nines" problem, meaning there are problems you cannot even know exist until you've solved all the prior issues hiding them; rinse & repeat. This makes clearly seeing the finish line impossible. So what happens when the Cybercab production lines are ready in 2026 if autonomy is still a year or two away from being widely deployable? A pivot. That pivot will be a more affordable Tesla vehicle.

Tesla designed the Cybercab to be an autonomous-first vehicle, but it's still a normal vehicle form factor. This contrasts with a vehicle such as the Zoox, which is far from a standard car. By taking this path, Tesla has left the door open to pivot. 

Zoox Autonomous Vehicle

A More Affordable Tesla

Tesla has teased a $25,000 vehicle in the past. Some call this more affordable car Model 2, we call it Model Next. Musk has said that this more affordable vehicle will not be needed. He claims that the Cybercab will make transportation-as-a-service so affordable and convenient that vehicle ownership will be a luxury that most people will not want.

Musk will eventually be right, but it's unlikely this is what the bulk of the world will look like in the (just around the corner) year 2026. This cheap and easy ride-hail vision may be true in a few cities by then, but a few cities will not support the production of millions of Cybercabs annually. Hence, there's a pivot coming in 2026 where the Cybercab platform will be the trojan horse hiding Model Next.

via Reddit user u/Donfatty

Emerging From Trojan Horse
(it's not just Cybercab with a steering wheel)

First, I must acknowledge that designing Model Next is more complex than adding a steering wheel and pedals to the Cybercab and then hitting the production button. Tesla had a project called NV91 to create Model Next. This program was canceled, but it can still be resurrected in a way that leverages much of the Cybercab platform.

What vehicle will emerge from Cybercab's platform? Let's start with the things that will not carry over. The peddles, steering wheel, and side mirrors are the most obvious additions to Model Next. The Cybercab's butterfly door will certainly be gone. These are great for a cab but too expensive for an affordable car. The large wheels of the Cybercab will not be used on a more affordable Model Next. Smaller wheels are cheaper and more efficient; you can expect to see 16" wheels on Model Next. Two seats: Even a tiny car like the Chevy Spark has four seats; you can expect four seats and four doors on Model Next.

The things that will carry over are under the hood (or frunk). The Model Next will share the same RWD drivetrain and battery pack. This means that Model Next will be the slowest vehicle that Tesla makes (assuming it comes out before the Robovan) and with a range of around 250 miles, it will likely be the shortest-range vehicle that Tesla makes at that time. The focus will be on affordability. If you want more range or better zero to 60, you'll need to look at the Model 3, Y, S, or X. 

Although Model Next added a steering wheel, it will not have mechanical linkage. Model Next will be drive-by-wire like the Cybertruck and may even use the same squared-off steering wheel design.

Next on our list is Etherloop, Tesla's innovative system that replaced the CAN bus in the Cybertruck. You can expect Etherloop in all of Tesla's future vehicles (Model Next included) and eventually, in refreshes of the existing lineup.

Timing

Since Tesla does not want to disrupt their current vehicle sales, you can expect them to keep this announcement under wraps as long as possible. The Model Next test mule vehicles will be skinned as Model 3 or Y vehicles so they don't draw too much attention.

If we're lucky, they'll hold an unveiling event in July'26 and begin taking orders that night for deliveries starting later that same year.

Referrals

If you're interested in a Tesla vehicle or solar, you can use my referral code and we'll both get perks (https://ts.la/patrick7819)

* Self-driving being "Solved" is an oversimplification. In this case, it means better than a typical human driver. Improvements will continue well beyond that point.

PGE: Time to Pay More

Earlier this year, I posted an article showing how we optimize our electricity usage so there's no grid load during peak hours. This both reduces stress on the grid and reduces our electricity bill. 

One of the key features of our optimization strategy was the rate schedule that we used. The default rate schedule here is called Basic and it's a flat rate; you pay the same amount per kilowatt-hour during a heat wave as you do on a winter night when there's surplus wind. We've opted out of the Basic plan; instead selecting the time-of-use (ToU) billing schedule. ToU gives us cheaper rates overnight than the basic plan, but it costs more during peak times. The other components of our optimization plan are charging our EVs overnight, plus solar and batteries which reduce or eliminate our electricity usage during any time other than the overnight off-peak rate hours.

We were just informed that our highly optimized plan will be disrupted at the start of 2025. Here's the letter we received message from our utility:

So ToU is going away and being replaced with Time-of-Day (ToD).

Let's look at the ToD plan. 

PGE Time-of-Day Rate Schedule (Nov 2024)

Here are a couple things I liked: 

• It doesn't have multiple seasons like ToU
• Saturday and Sunday are all off-peak; whereas on ToU Saturday is a mix of mid-peak and off-peak

But there's one important thing I don't like: it's more expensive. Both the off-peak and peak prices are higher than ToU. The off-peak price is 63% higher and the peak price is 48% higher. The mid-peak is 25% cheaper. The off-peak increase is the most important factor in our situation (more on this later).

The utility has a tool to run your energy usage data from the last year through each billing option. Here are our results:

As you can see, ToD will cost us about $400 more annually; we'll still save compared to the Basic plan. We spent a lot of money on our solar panels and batteries. Part of the justification for that expense was that we'd save on our bills going forward. With this change, the utility has delayed our breakeven by $400 per year.

ToU and ToD have different time schedules and pricing. Here's a comparison graph of all 3 plans for a weekday.

You can see in the graph above that ToD stays on off-peak for an hour longer in the mornings, and off-peak starts an hour earlier in the evening. 

When last year's data was run through the comparison tool, it examined a usage pattern optimized for ToU. So, it is not surprising that ToU had the best result. I may be able to reoptimize our usage to better fit ToD; to shave some cost off the increase from ToU to ToD. However, since the bulk of our grid usage is during off-peak, there's not much we can optimize. The increase in the off-peak price will directly impact our costs. Whereas, for our use case, the changes in the mid-peak and peak prices are nearly irrelevant.

The utility should encourage off-peak usage. This is when the wind blows in the Columbia Gorge and the industries are not there to soak up this abundance. This is when they have surplus zero-carbon energy on the grid. Raising the off-peak price by 63% is incongruous with the reliable grid and low-carbon energy goals.

I'll certainly post more about this in 2025 after we've been on the ToD plan for a while. A before and after comparison will be interesting to see if the tool's projections were accurate or if we could find some tweak that allows us to optimize in some way that's not immediately obvious. See you then.