Elon Musk Launches the Robotaxi—Can Tesla’s Cybercab Share the Road with America’s Myth of the Highway?

Can Tesla cybercab share the road with the American myth of the highway?

By Deni Ellis Béchard Edited by Dean Visser

In the American psyche, the automobile – this great democner of distance – has always been more than transport. It is freedom embodied: the ability to leave and become someone new states. It is James Dean who smokes a cigarette, leaning against a mudguard – masculinity codified in chrome and horses, sexuality expressed through speed ratios and exhaust notes. It is Thelma and Louise who escape not only from their dreary life, but everything that does not go with their culture. We had the Corvette, the Mustang, the loader, the Eldorado, the Camaro, the Thunderbird – and soon we will have the cybercab.

Elon Musk revealed the Cybercab prototype last October, with targeted production for 2026, and today a convoy of 10 to 20 Robotaxie Model began to open the way for its launch, testing the security of Tesla’s autonomous driving technology on a geofized loop in Austin, Texas. But cybercab stands out in the emerging genealogy of robotaxis. While the motto of the Robotaxi of the Amazon Zoox subsidiary – which looks like a cross between an Art Deco toaster and a metro car – is “it’s not a car”, cybercab, for all its rationalized science fiction minimalism, remains squarely in automotive territory: elegant two -seater driving. However, there is no wheel to grasp, no gas pedal to trample on the ground. The shape of the car indicates that you can always escape your life, but now has driven. The promise may seem attractive: all mobility; None of the responsibilities.

More than a century after the first T model T model for $ 825 in 1908 (almost $ 29,000 today), we forgot the speed and depth of the car property. In 1900, less than 1% of American households had cars. In 1913, the assembly line of the Henry Ford mobile belt reduced the construction time to 93 minutes, and Texas Bon Marché oil kept the full tank, passing the personal mobility of luxury to default adjustment. A 1927 survey revealed that 55.7% of American families had at least one car.

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It was not before 1926, however, the American myth of the highway really started when Route 66 – John Steinbeck called him “Mother Road” in THE Anger– Chicago and Santa Monica, California, in the book Travel hipHistorian Peter Dedek described the road “A pillar of automotive culture in the middle of the 20th century”, a corridor where vacationers, beatniks, cowboys and Okies fleeing the dust bowl contributed to myths of freedom and transformation. Photographer Robert Frank revealed in his 1958 book Americans How the windshield glass transformed travelers into a spectator and an exhibition. The cars that Frank represent were as many social containers as the machines. Robin Reisenfeld, who organized the exhibition of the Toledo Museum of Art Life is a highway: American art and automotive cultureargued in an interview with Antiquities and weekly arts that “the automobile has defined our company” and was used as “a means of self-expression, status and identity”.

After the Second World War, the GI Bill financed suburban mortgages, so millions of people fled dense cities. And in 1956, the Federal-Aid Highway Act financed 41,000 miles of highway-an asphalt skeleton justified as a civil defense infrastructure but experienced as an ocean of one ocean to another for auto-reingation. The tail fins and chrome from the late 1950s reported the optimism of the Cold War, while Jack Kerouac’s novel in 1957 On the road And the song by Chuck Berry of 1958 “Johnny B. Goode” has coded the romance of the endless movement in the firmware of culture. However, the myth of the open road has always been to know who is in the driver’s seat. The driver is king: a hand on the wheel, eyes on the horizon, free to lower this dusty side road on a whim. Control of his vehicle is assimilated to controlling his destiny. The cars have changed the sound of our music, rock guitars moving the roar of the engines, and they changed the way we have courted, providing not only a means of transport but also a destination, allowing couples to move away from the “porch swings, living room sofas, ruffles mothers and annoying brothers and sisters”, as the historian David L. Lewis L. Lewis mothers in her in her in his mothers in her in her mothers in her in her mothers in her in her mothers in her in her in his mothers in his mothers in his mothers in his mothers in his brothers and his brothers and brothers Michigan quarterly review Article “Sex and the automobile: from Rumble Seats to Rockin ‘Vans”. A number of films, such as Training (1976), Fat (1978) and American Drive-in (1985), represented cars as popular places for meetings.

The tradition of the highway, however, has never been without criticism, and the choice of the word “king” (followed by “of the road”, for example) was not accidental. The men were mainly driving, and even when the highways offered freedom, they sculpted concrete canyons in the neighborhoods, separating communities. Public transport has not followed the pace to help those who without cars cross the increasingly large distances between the house and the work or to welcome people with disabilities or the elderly. Studies have since revealed the scope of business efforts to dismantle public transport systems and thus encourage the possession of cars. In 1998, architecture criticism Jane Holtz Kay wrote in the book Asphalt nation This “mobility has completely disappeared for the third of the nation which cannot lead legally – these 80 million Americans who do not use cars because they are too old, too young or too poor”. A 2012 brooking report revealed that in the 100 largest American metropolitan areas, typical work could be reached by transit in 90 minutes by only 27% of workers.

In many ways, the debates around the Robotaxis overturned the story. Critics say that they reduce personal agencies while writing to us in an information network against our will (although the simple fact of carrying a smartphone does it quite well), while defenders maintain that autonomous vehicles could offer freedom to groups that have benefited the least under the kings of the old car. People with disabilities and the elderly could more easily find work and the community, or they could simply experience More: look on this highway horizon and go everywhere. A 2017 report estimated that autonomous vehicles could authorize two million people with disabilities to enter the job market, and this has highlighted a potential annual saving of $ 19 billion in health expenditure due to less missed medical meetings. Robotaxy could even offer the freedom of the exhausting journey, exhausting hours have passed to Jockey in traffic and allow naps or Netflix to slip, time to respond to emails or – for a couple or a parent and a child – time to speak and connect. A study in 2023 in Borders in future transport and another from 2020 in Sensors Recorded lower stress levels in autonomous vehicle passengers. We could argue that carpooling already provides freedoms similar to those offered by Robotaxis, but rental drivers can be tired, grumpy or pressed, and there is a social dynamic and a rating system, which can limit other freedoms, even as simple as the desire to be silent with its thoughts.

Cybercab can look like a miniature sports car soaked in science fiction, but the roar of the engine has been replaced by silence, and the interior is spacious. There will undoubtedly be seeds and accidents piled up by media coverage. However, the car will probably obey speed limits, will never become sleepy or drunk and never rubber or yield to the road rage. With Robotaxy, more teenagers can arrive at home safely and more grandparents can embark on the adventure of a life. As for the design, there will always be a disagreement; The very concept of aesthetics invites debate, and our sensitivity to modes is often deeply linked to the policy of change and to people in power.

The biggest challenge facing autonomous vehicles will probably be public opinion. A recent survey concerning 8,000 Americans carried out by the intelligence report on electric vehicles on the market market initiative revealed that 71% of respondents were not willing to drive in rootaxis and that 43% thought they should be illegal. However, recent research shows different figures after people have got into autonomous vehicles. A 2021 report on a driver of an autonomous shuttle service in UTAH revealed that 95% of the runners interviewed had more positive opinions on technology and that 98% said they felt safe. And as adoption increases, prices should drop. While Goldman Sachs Research estimated that the driving costs of Robotaxie were $ 3.13 per Mile in 2024, he expected the number to fall below $ 1 per 2030 and reached a more than 50% drop in Robotaxis costs by Mile between 2025 and 2030. Be up to 87% cheaper than a standard salvation route.

As for the myth of the highway, if you want to go beyond a thunderstorm or run through an amber light, take an impromptu detour in a countryside or make an unexpected stop in an “last chance” restaurant, conventional cars will remain part of American culture like a hobby, just as people always go up for horses for fun. But we can see new stories arise. The film Road Trip of the Future could present two friends in a cybercab arguing which streaming service to look at until they realize the true meaning of their trip. And maybe the next Kerouac will write a novel on their laptop because an autonomous car carries them through the continent. With its large windshield, the cybercab seems to be suitable for the highway, and it can end up being as much a means of transport as a destination. In short, the car itself can become the training theater.