Tesla Cybercab Specs Revealed: Supermanifold V3, No Rare Earth Magnets & More

Tesla's Cybercab has gone from concept-stage curiosity to a vehicle carrying paying passengers in Austin — and thanks to last week's launch event, regulatory filings, and newly published rider handbooks, we finally have a full picture of what's underneath those gold panels. The details paint a picture of a car engineered around one goal: strip out cost and complexity everywhere it's possible to do so.

Even if you'll never own one, the Cybercab is worth paying attention to. Tesla has a long history of piloting hardware on one platform and rolling it into the rest of the lineup, so several of these parts may show up in a future Model 3 or Model Y.

Supermanifold V3: A First for a Production Tesla

Thermal management runs through an evolved cooling loop Tesla calls Supermanifold V3 — its first appearance on a production vehicle. The unified manifold does away with standalone external valves and plumbing hoses, and consolidates the high- and low-voltage controllers onto one central block.

"We removed unnecessary refrigerant valves and lines and consolidated the high-and low-voltage controllers, reducing parts and complexity. Its modular design makes its production 80% automated and its operation 38% more efficient than other automotive thermal systems." — Tesla engineering overview

Fewer hoses and valves means fewer things to leak, and a thermal system that's 38% more efficient has real downstream benefits for charging speed and cabin comfort.

A Motor With No Rare Earth Metals

Propulsion comes from a single front-wheel-drive permanent magnet motor making 163 kW (219 horsepower). The stator uses bar windings and a simplified lubrication circuit, and the whole drive unit can be assembled in under ten seconds. It's 18% smaller and 25% lighter than competing EV drive units.

The headline, though, is what's missing. Elon Musk confirmed the motor uses zero rare earth metals — a major supply chain win:

"The Cybercab motor uses no rare earth metals, but maintains the same range! This was extremely hard to achieve." — Elon Musk

Battery and Range Numbers

Energy storage is a structural pack built around dry-cathode 4680 cells, with a calculated usable capacity of 47.6 kWh. Tesla engineered it to survive 500,000 miles of continuous DC fast charging plus harsh temperature swings — which makes sense for a vehicle that will spend its life plugged into fast chargers between rides.

• Unadjusted multicycle range test: 418.2 miles
• Estimated EPA 5-cycle adjusted range: roughly 293 miles
• Efficiency: 6.16 miles per kWh

That efficiency figure is remarkable — most EVs on the road today land somewhere in the 3 to 4 miles-per-kWh range.

No Brake Fluid, No Steering Column

Under the injection-molded gold exterior panels, the chassis skips standard automotive fluid lines entirely. Braking uses individual electromechanical brake-by-wire actuators at each caliper, with no central hydraulic master cylinder and no brake fluid at all. The steer-by-wire rack sits behind the front drive unit and runs on an updated 48-volt architecture.

Sensors, Compute, and Cabin Monitoring

Autonomy compute is handled by an improved self-driving computer built on Hardware 4 architecture with iterative silicon updates. Tesla hasn't published exact specs, but it's more powerful than what's shipping in consumer vehicles today.

• Nine cameras total: eight outward-facing, one cabin-facing
• The interior camera scans between trips for cleanliness and left-behind belongings, showing a green onscreen icon when active
• An overhead radar module near the dome lights acts as an Occupant Classification System, detecting empty seats, child seats, or adults to enable or disable passenger airbags
• Airbags include front, knee, curtain, and dual seat-mounted side units

Tesla is also building out a network of Robotaxi hubs to clean and charge vehicles between rides.

Dimensions and Interior Space

With no steering column or pedals eating into the footwell, the Cybercab's cabin is more generous than its small footprint suggests: 43.4 inches of legroom, 38.3 inches of headroom, and 50.1 inches of hip room.

• Overall height: 55.4 inches
• Overall width: 69.0 inches
• Ground clearance: 5.7 inches
• Step-in height: 16.5 inches
• Curb weight: 3,113 lbs
• GVWR: 3,730 lbs
• Payload capacity: 617 lbs
• Rear trunk volume: 20.2 cu ft (572 L)
• Max trunk weight: 220 lbs (100 kg)

The seats slide fore and aft as a single linked bench, with independently reclining backrests. There's no seat heating or ventilation, though Tesla notes the Cybercab will already be warm when it picks you up. Each rider gets an individual vent they can shut off manually.

Cargo-wise, the rear area swallows two checked bags plus two carry-ons, or a folded stroller or compact wheelchair. Worth noting for parents: child seats must be secured with the vehicle seat belts, since the seats have no lower LATCH anchors.

What Riders Get Inside

Entertainment centers on a 22-inch touchscreen. Riders can already plug in game controllers, and Musk recently teased that full gaming consoles will be supported down the line. Built-in USB-C ports handle device charging — there's no wireless phone charging pad — and Cybercabs are being built with integrated Starlink dishes for low-latency satellite connectivity in the future.

The Takeaway for Tesla Owners

The Cybercab is the clearest look yet at where Tesla's cost engineering is headed, and a few pieces here are strong candidates to migrate into consumer vehicles: the rare-earth-free motor, Supermanifold V3, and the 48-volt architecture that's already appearing on Cybertruck.

In the meantime, the USB-C-only cabin is a useful reminder for anyone riding or traveling — if your car or your robotaxi drops wireless charging, a good USB-C cable and a fast-charging adapter become essentials rather than nice-to-haves. And if the 500,000-mile fast-charging durability target tells us anything, it's that Tesla is betting hard on DC fast charging as the default, not the exception.