Elon Musk called YouTuber Marques Brownlee “a chicken” early Saturday morning, hours after Tesla opened invitation-only Cybercab orders for $29,990 and Brownlee argued that his famous head-shaving bet is not lost.
Tesla has about seven weeks to get a Cybercab into a customer’s hands for less than $30,000 by 2027, but the half-baked version of the Cybercab they opened orders for with delivery in December makes it seem like it’s just to win this sucker bet.
Surely Tesla isn’t depressed enough to deliver a half-assed product just to “prove” a YouTuber wrong? Or not?
The bet that Musk won’t let go
After Tesla’s “We, Robot” event in October 2024, Brownlee (MKBHD) said there was no way Tesla would deliver a Cybercab to a customer for $30,000 or less before 2027. If it did, it would shave its head on camera.
Since then, Musk has taken it personally. When the first Cybercab rolled out of the Giga Texas line in February, he responded “It’s going to happen 😂” to a bald MKBHD meme, which we covered at the time. In September, after Brownlee doubled down in a new video, Musk wrote: “Guess he really wants to shave his head 🤷♂️.”
What Tesla really sells
On Friday, Tesla began inviting “select customers” to purchase a Cybercab for personal use. The order page lists $29,990, a mandatory $299 per month autonomy subscription, a $1,000 non-refundable deposit, and estimated delivery in December 2026, only in Tesla Robotaxi cities in Texas.
As we reported on Friday, the car only operates within Tesla’s Robotaxi geofences. And Tesla’s Cybercab Autonomy Subscription Agreement says it “will not work” without the $299 plan, prohibits owners from putting it on the Robotaxi network or using it for ride-sharing, and allows Tesla to reduce the operating area at any time.
So Tesla designed a robotaxi and then offered it to select private owners who are not allowed to use it as a taxi. Over five years, that works out to $47,631 before insurance, registration and fees. And you are limited to small geofenced areas. If you stop paying the monthly Tesla fee, which can change at any time, your cyber taxi becomes a paperweight.
MKBHD: “My hair is safe”
Brownlee made his case Friday night. There are no deliveries yet, the car is available by invitation only and is not publicly available and cannot be used as a taxi outside of existing geofences. He called it “a paperweight if I take this home,” although he admits that the last point is not technically part of the bet.
Tesla fans responded with clips from his September video, where he described a car that “won’t be shipping to regular people like you and me for $30,000 before the end of 2026.” Whole Mars Catalog, an Elon Musk propagandist whose real name is Omar Qazi, told him to “be a man and keep your word.” Musk reposted it and then responded:
Musk also reposted a response from Grok stating that the current offer “matches” the conditions of the bet.
But around the same time, Musk responded directly to Brownlee’s post about the order page, and it didn’t help Tesla’s case:
“It will be available nationwide, as we receive regulatory approval. But the monthly fee is too high. It should match the cost of the Tesla FSD and connectivity of other models, which is more like ~$115/month.”
The CEO of Tesla confirms, one day after the launch, that the car cannot be sold outside the areas where it already operates and that its price is incorrect. A price that Musk completely controls.
Electrek’s opinion
Yes, it seems like Tesla is rushing to do this just to win a bet against a Youtuber. Absolutely crazy behavior. We’ve seen this movie before. In June 2025, Tesla made a single “autonomous delivery” of a Model Y to meet Musk’s deadline, and never did it again.
Tesla always presented the Cybercab as a vehicle for its Robotaxi network. Now, seven weeks before the deadline, a version appears for personal use that is by invitation only, only in Texas, is prohibited from doing the only thing it was designed to do, and is attached to a subscription that Musk himself says is too expensive. If you set out to create a product whose main job was to allow Musk to claim he won a bet on Twitter, it would look a lot like this.
This Cybercab offer is completely broken. The value proposition is horrible. As others have said, it’s a permanent variable rate lease that starts at $300 a month with a ridiculous $30,000 down payment.
What do you get for this deal? A two-seater vehicle that only works in small, incomplete, geofenced areas and does not have a steering wheel to do anything else with it. Meanwhile, Tesla insists that the Model Y, like those used in its current Robotaxi service along with the Cybercab, uses the same autonomous driving technology.
You can buy one for $40,000 and you’ll get a lot more car than the Cybercab; then you can pay $99 a month for FSD instead of $300 a month. Tesla is supposed to allow current Tesla owners to drive unsupervised in geofenced areas, which would basically be the same product Tesla is offering now with the Cybertruck, but you are not a slave to Tesla, which can lock your car at any time or change the terms.
This offer just doesn’t make sense, and Musk more or less admits as much by saying the price should be the same as FSD, not $300 a month.
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