Tesla Cybercab Production Ramps at Giga Texas With Six Units in Crash Testing and Molds on Site

Six Cybercabs are currently being destroyed so that more can be built. That detail — six units simultaneously in crash testing — is the clearest signal yet that Tesla’s production ramp for the Cybercab at Giga Texas is moving on schedule toward its April 2026 volume production target. The update comes from Joe Tegtmeyer, a Tesla employee whose factory observations the company has not disputed, posting on X in late February 2026.

• The Fact: Tesla has received a complete set of Thermoplastic Injection Molds for the Cybercab’s exterior at Giga Texas, and multiple Cybercabs are now routing autonomously through the facility’s parking lots to the production line’s main door.
• The Delta: Six Cybercabs are in simultaneous crash testing — a volume of test hardware that suggests parts supply and pre-production builds are further along than public reporting indicated, or that Tesla built dedicated crash test units separate from the tracked first-production milestone.
• The Buyer Impact: With tooling on site and crash testing running in parallel, Tesla appears on course for April volume production. That timing matters if you’re waiting on the sub-$30,000 price point before committing.

Tooling Arrival Confirms the Cybercab Production Line Is Taking Shape

Receiving a complete set of Thermoplastic Injection Molds for the exterior marks a concrete threshold in manufacturing readiness. Injection molds for body panels are among the longest-lead items in any new vehicle program — they take months to machine and validate, and their arrival at the production facility means the supplier chain has cleared one of the hardest bottlenecks. For the Cybercab, which uses thermoplastic body panels rather than stamped steel, the molds are not a peripheral item. They are the exterior. That material choice is also a deliberate cost decision, part of how Tesla intends to hit its under-$30,000 price target.

It’s worth noting that molds arriving at the factory is a supplier milestone, not a production milestone. Injection mold validation for exterior panels typically involves multiple iteration cycles after delivery before parts are approved for production. “Molds on site” and “molds producing approved parts” are two different things. Tegtmeyer’s observation confirms delivery. It doesn’t confirm validation.

Tegtmeyer also observed multiple Cybercabs navigating the facility autonomously — exiting off the highway access and routing through parking areas to reach the production line’s main entrance. That kind of self-directed movement through a live industrial facility isn’t what a prototype fleet does. It’s what a near-production system does when engineers need to accumulate real-world miles on the FSD Unsupervised software stack before the vehicle goes to customers who can’t take over the wheel because there is no wheel.

Six Cybercabs in Crash Testing at Once Is a Notable Number

Running six units through crash testing simultaneously is not standard for a vehicle program with only one production unit publicly confirmed. Tesla rolled its first Cybercab off the Giga Texas line on February 17, 2026, less than two weeks before this update. Six units in structural validation testing suggests either the pre-production build rate has been considerably higher than anyone tracked — which would be good news for manufacturing confidence — or Tesla built dedicated crash test bucks separate from the production milestone count. Many manufacturers do exactly this: purpose-built structural frames that never touch a road, consumed purely for regulatory data.

The data doesn’t tell us which scenario applies here. What it does tell us is that the crash testing program is running at scale, and that matters for a specific regulatory reason.

Federal crash testing for a vehicle with no steering wheel and no pedals is not a simple paperwork exercise. The Cybercab requires NHTSA exemptions to operate legally on public roads — standard Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards assume a human driver with manual controls. Tesla needs those exemptions granted before consumer sales begin, and a crash test program running at this scale is part of that regulatory case. More simultaneous tests means faster data, faster submissions, and potentially a shorter wait for regulatory sign-off.

The April Timeline Has Hard Dependencies Beyond Manufacturing

Hardware readiness and regulatory readiness are two different clocks running at different speeds. Tesla’s manufacturing progress at Giga Texas looks real — molds on site, crash testing running, autonomous test vehicles moving through the facility. That’s a company that intends to build Cybercabs in volume, and soon.

But the vehicle it’s building cannot be manually controlled. Every mile a Cybercab travels depends entirely on FSD Unsupervised, and that software’s public track record in Tesla’s Austin robotaxi program deserves attention. Tesla’s Austin robotaxi fleet has crashed approximately once every 57,000 miles — roughly four times the rate Tesla itself considers normal for human drivers, according to NHTSA data. The Austin fleet uses Model Y vehicles with safety monitors. The Cybercab won’t have either.

There’s also the question of where the Cybercab will actually operate at launch. Tesla logged zero autonomous test miles in California in 2025 — the sixth straight year of nothing — and has not applied for any advanced California permits. Texas’s regulatory framework is far more permissive, which is why Austin is Tesla’s only functioning robotaxi market. Early Cybercab deployments will almost certainly be Austin-first, with all the geographic and regulatory constraints that implies.

The leadership question hasn’t resolved either. Victor Nechita, the Vehicle Program Manager who led the Cybercab from concept to first production, left Tesla the day after that first unit rolled off the line. Tesla has since promoted internally and is moving forward, but Nechita was the third vehicle program manager to exit since November 2025.

What the Cybercab Actually Is

For anyone coming to this fresh: the Cybercab is a two-passenger electric vehicle with no steering wheel, no pedals, and butterfly doors. It has a 35 kWh battery pack and charges inductively — park it over a pad, no plug required. Tesla has priced it under $30,000 and confirmed it will be sold to consumers, not just operated as a fleet vehicle. It runs exclusively on FSD Unsupervised. You cannot manually operate it. That’s the product, and that’s both the appeal and the regulatory complexity in one sentence.

Tesla set the April 2026 volume production target at its November 2025 earnings event. The current activity at Giga Texas — tooling on site, crash testing running, autonomous test vehicles moving through the facility — is consistent with a company that plans to hit that date.

EVXL’s Take

The manufacturing signals are genuinely encouraging. Thermoplastic molds on site and six crash test units running simultaneously isn’t theater — that’s what an aggressive production ramp looks like in its final weeks. Tesla’s factory execution, when the company is motivated, has surprised skeptics before. The Cybertruck’s production hell was real, but the company did eventually figure it out. I don’t dismiss the April target.

What I’m more skeptical of is the gap between “Tesla can build Cybercabs” and “Tesla can profitably deploy Cybercabs at scale.” The vehicle is the easy part — or at least the part Tesla is better at than its critics credit. The hard parts are the NHTSA exemptions, the FSD Unsupervised software that still crashes at four times the human rate in real-world Austin conditions, and a regulatory map where the only permissive market is the one city where the service is already struggling to scale past roughly 45 vehicles.

I’d also pump the brakes slightly on the mold arrival as a production signal. Molds showing up at Giga Texas confirms the supplier hit its delivery date. It doesn’t confirm that Tesla has run validation cycles and approved the parts for production. Those are separate steps, and they take time. Worth watching whether Tegtmeyer or anyone else reports parts actually coming off those molds in the next few weeks.

My prediction: Tesla starts Cybercab volume production in April as targeted, ships its first consumer units to early buyers in Austin by June 2026, and then spends the rest of the year managing the gap between production capacity and deployable fleet size — constrained by regulatory approvals and the FSD performance bar it needs to meet before putting passengers in an unstaffed vehicle. Watch the Q2 2026 earnings call for the first honest signal on how that gap is actually closing.

Editorial Note: AI tools were used to assist with research and archive retrieval for this article. All reporting, analysis, and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.