Tesla Sells First Private Cybercabs at $29,990 — Musk Calls His Own $299 Fee Too High

Tesla is selling its first privately owned Cybercab for $29,990 — and Elon Musk says the $299 monthly subscription fee attached to it is too high.

The company began inviting "select customers" on Friday, November 13, to order the Cybercab for personal use, according to a post from Tesla's Robotaxi account on X. The two-seater has no steering wheel and no pedals. The order page lists the car at $29,990 before taxes, plus an Autonomy Subscription of $299 a month and a $1,000 non-refundable deposit. Estimated delivery is December, in Austin, Texas.

The stakes here are straightforward. This is the first time Tesla has sold a car to individuals that physically cannot be driven by a human, and the first time a Tesla purchase carries a mandatory recurring fee just to make the vehicle move. The business model is plain: the car does nothing without a recurring payment to Tesla, which makes software revenue part of every sale instead of an optional add-on.

What did Musk actually say about the fee?

Musk weighed in about seven hours after the invitations went out. Replying early Saturday to YouTube reviewer Marques Brownlee, who had posted details of the invite-only order page, Musk wrote that the Cybercab "will be available nationwide, as we receive regulatory approval." Then he added: "But the monthly fee is too high. Should match the cost of Tesla FSD and connectivity for other models, which is more like ~$115/month."

He did not say when, or whether, the fee would change. That leaves buyers looking at a subscription Tesla's own CEO calls overpriced.

The gap is large for a car at this price. At $299, a year of service costs $3,588, about 12% of the sticker price. At Musk's figure of roughly $115, a year would cost about $1,380. The math matters because the subscription is not optional — the fine print on the order page reads: "Subscription and regular vehicle maintenance required to operate."

How locked down is the subscription?

The subscription box on the order page is checked by default. Screenshots of the subscription terms, posted by an X user and summarized by TeslaNorth, show the restrictions go well beyond driving.

• Owners cannot put the car to work on Tesla's Robotaxi network, ride-hailing, delivery or rental platforms without Tesla's authorization.
• The fee covers autonomous driving, connectivity, remote support and roadside help, along with tires, windshields and wipers.
• Owners still pay for insurance, registration, charging and parking.
• The agreement lets Tesla change the price with a month's notice.

The agreement does not list a price — the $299 figure appears only on the order page. Tesla has not published the full text on its official X accounts.

In short, the buyer owns the hardware but rents the ability to use it, on terms Tesla can reprice with 30 days' warning.

Where can the car actually go?

Tesla decides the map, not the owner. Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla's head of AI, said on X: "It'll work unsupervised inside all the same geo locations as @robotaxi, just serving the owners' needs."

That means the eight cities in Texas and Florida where Tesla runs its Robotaxi service, Electrek reported. The invitation email warns: "Only available in supported service areas. Subscription required for operation."

Brownlee, in his post, added two more constraints: buyers must accept delivery in Texas, and each buyer is limited to one vehicle.

So a personal Cybercab is functionally a private Robotaxi with the same fences as the fleet version. The takeaway: ownership buys you exclusive use of the car, not freedom over where it travels.

What is the regulatory situation?

The December deliveries arrive while federal regulators are still reviewing the vehicle itself. The Cybercab began carrying riders in Austin in September, when federal regulators asked Tesla how it certified a vehicle without manual controls. Tesla answered the agency on October 30, and the agency hasn't ruled, Electrek reported.

The personal-use sales push also fits a timeline Tesla set for itself. Lars Moravy, Tesla's vice president of vehicle engineering, said last month that the company aimed to start selling Cybercabs to the public by the end of the year, Reuters reported. The invitations went out roughly six weeks before that deadline.

The service footprint has been expanding steadily. Reuters noted that Tesla opened its unsupervised Robotaxi service in Austin in June 2025, added Dallas and Houston in April, and Miami in July.

What happens after delivery?

Tesla estimates the first privately owned Cybercabs will arrive in Austin in December. The first month of service is included, so the first subscription charge would come a month after delivery — at whatever price Tesla has settled on by then.

That timing gives Tesla room to cut the fee before anyone's card is charged, which may be the point of Musk's public comment. It also means the first real test of the model — whether owners accept a mandatory, repricable subscription on a car they bought outright — starts in January, not December.

For now, the pricing tension sits unresolved: a CEO publicly calling his own product's fee too high, weeks before the first bill arrives.