EVwire brief: The Tesla Cybercab has turned up in New Zealand, around 12,000 km (7,500 miles) from where they are built in Texas.
The two-seat robotaxis were filmed riding a car transporter, and they are widely tipped to be heading for the Southern Hemisphere Proving Grounds (SHPG), a site automakers use for cold-weather testing. Tesla has not commented on the sighting.
Here's the sighting that lit up X:
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Photos of the Cybercab, together with a larger, covered SUV on the top deck of the transporter, were also shared online. Speculations among members of the EV community suggested that the larger SUV might be a US-spec Model Y L, as the vehicle has also been seen testing in the United States.
Context:
Tesla has a habit of shipping prototypes to New Zealand in the middle of the year. While the Northern Hemisphere bakes in summer, the South Island still gets snow, and the SHPG gives carmakers a winter test site in June.
Tesla published a video about this tradition of sorts on YouTube back in December 2022:
Tesla ran the same playbook with the Cybertruck, which showed up in New Zealand in June 2023 for late-stage winter validation before the pickup reached production.
The timing is the interesting part. Tesla has been building Cybercabs in volume at Giga Texas, with drone flyovers catching increasing numbers at the site, so the basic hardware already looks finished. Cold-weather runs now point to validation and software tuning, and getting the autonomy stack to proficiently handle snow and ice.
Source: Gareth Blake Hall on X
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