Elon Musk called YouTuber Marques Brownlee “a chicken” early Saturday, hours after Tesla opened invite-only Cybercab orders at $29,990 and Brownlee argued that his famous head-shaving bet isn’t lost.
Tesla has about seven weeks to get a Cybercab into a customer’s hands for under $30,000 before 2027, but the half-baked version of Cybercab that they opened orders for with delivery in December makes it look like it’s just to win this dumb bet.
Surely Tesla isn’t down enough to deliver a half-baked product just to “prove” a YouTuber wrong? Or is it?
The bet 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, he’d shave his head on camera.
Musk has taken it personally ever since. When the first Cybercab came off the Giga Texas line in February, he replied “Gonna happen 😂” to a bald-MKBHD meme, which we covered at the time. In September, after Brownlee doubled down in a new video, Musk wrote: “I guess he really wants to shave his head 🤷♂️”
What Tesla is actually selling
On Friday, Tesla started inviting “select customers” to buy 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 an estimated delivery of December 2026, only in Tesla’s Texas Robotaxi cities.
As we reported Friday, the car only operates inside Tesla’s Robotaxi geofences. And Tesla’s Cybercab Autonomy Subscription Agreement says it “will not operate” without the $299 plan, bans owners from putting it on the Robotaxi network or using it for ride-hailing, and lets Tesla shrink the operating area at any time.
So Tesla designed a robotaxi, then offered it to select private owners who aren’t allowed to use it as a taxi. Over five years, that’s $47,631 before insurance, registration, and charging. And you are limited to small geofenced areas. If you stop paying Tesla’s monthly fee, which it can change at all times, your cybercab becomes a paperweight.
MKBHD: “My hair is safe”
Brownlee laid out his case Friday night. There are no deliveries yet, the car is invite-only rather than publicly available, and it can’t be used as a cab outside of the existing geofences. He called it “a paperweight if I take this thing home,” though he admits that last point isn’t technically part of the bet.
Tesla fans fired back with clips from his September video, where he described a car that “will not ship to regular people like you and me for $30k 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 honor your word.” Musk reposted it, then replied:
Musk also reposted a Grok answer claiming the current offer “matches” the conditions of the bet.
But around the same time, Musk replied 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. Should match the cost of Tesla FSD and connectivity for other models, which is more like ~$115/month.”
That’s Tesla’s CEO confirming, a day after launch, that the car can’t be sold outside the areas where it already operates and that its price is wrong. A price that Musk fully controls.
Electrek’s Take
Yes, it looks like Tesla is rushing this out just to win a bet against a Youtuber. Absolutely insane behavior. We’ve seen this movie before. In June 2025, Tesla did a single “autonomous delivery” of a Model Y to meet a Musk deadline, then never did it again.
Tesla always pitched the Cybercab as a vehicle for its Robotaxi network. Now, seven weeks before the deadline, a personal-use version shows up that’s invite-only, Texas-only, banned from doing the one thing it was designed for, and attached to a subscription Musk himself says is too expensive. If you set out to build a product whose main job was letting Musk claim he won a Twitter bet, it would look a lot like this.
This Cybercab offering is completely broken. The value proposition is awful. As others have put it, it’s a permanent variable rate lease starting at $300 a month with a ridiculous $30,000 down payment.
What do you get for this deal? A 2-seater vehicle that only works in small, incomplete, geo-fenced areas and has no steering wheel to do anything else with it. Meanwhile, Tesla insists that the Model Y, like the ones used in its current Robotaxi service alongside the Cybercab, uses the same self-driving technology.
You can buy one for $40,000, and you 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 let current Tesla owners drive without supervision in the geo-fenced areas, which would basically be the same product as what Tesla is offering right now with the Cybertruck, but you are not a slave to Tesla, which can brick your car at any time or change the terms.
This offer simply makes no sense, and Musk is sort of admitting it by saying the price should be the same as FSD, not $300 a month.
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