Tesla Cybercab Will Shrink to a 40 kWh Battery Pack, Musk Says

Tesla plans to give its Cybercab robotaxi a smaller 40 kWh battery pack and a second body color, liquid silver, CEO Elon Musk said in a post on X. Musk tied the smaller pack to coming efficiency improvements and said the silver option would keep the fleet’s colors from being “too monotonous.”

He did not give a date for when the updated Cybercab would reach the road, and he did not share range figures for it.

How the new pack compares with today’s Cybercab

The current Cybercab carries a 47.6 kWh battery built with Tesla’s dry-cathode 4680 cells, according to Not a Tesla App. A kilowatt-hour (kWh) measures how much energy a battery stores, so a smaller number means a smaller pack. The outlet puts the car’s efficiency at just over 6 miles per kWh and its EPA-adjusted range at about 293 miles.

By Not a Tesla App’s estimate, a 40 kWh pack would be about 16% smaller than the current one. The outlet expects the efficiency gains Musk mentioned to keep any range loss small, though Tesla has not published numbers for the new version.

Lighter and cheaper to build

A smaller battery cuts weight and cost. The Cybercab weighs 3,113 lbs today, and Not a Tesla App says a lighter pack could bring it under 3,000 lbs.

Tesla appears to have planned for cheaper chemistry as well. A recent teardown of the Cybercab by Munro Live found space in the pack for lower-cost LFP (lithium iron phosphate) cells and battery modules that can be replaced one at a time, the outlet reported.

Liquid silver joins gold

Every Cybercab built so far has been gold. Tesla does not paint the car. It adds color to the plastic body panels while they are molded, using a process called reaction injection molding that blends the pigment into the material before it is injected. That method produces the glossy gold finish on current cars, and Not a Tesla App expects the silver version to have a similar shine.

A second color would also help riders tell cars apart. The Cybercab already has an RGB light bar on its nose that shows a passenger which car is theirs.

What it means for buyers and riders

For people who ride in a Cybercab, the change is mostly visual for now. For Tesla, a smaller and lighter pack lowers the cost of each car it builds for its robotaxi service, at a time when it is trying to put many more of them on the road.

Tesla is expanding output. Giga Texas is reportedly adding a night shift to double Cybercab production, and Tesla will stop building the Cybertruck in mid-2027 to make room for more Cybercabs, according to Not a Tesla App. That decision affects anyone shopping for a new Cybertruck, since production of the pickup has an end date.

What happens next

Cybercab rides are scheduled to expand beyond Austin this month, and Tesla is targeting its first customer deliveries by the end of the year. Not a Tesla App expects the silver Cybercab could appear on roads sometime in 2027.

Source: Not a Tesla App