"What a privilege to work on something that truly moves the transportation game onwards"

James McLachlan: We’re here on the orange sofa at Car Design Dialogues Detroit with Ian Kettle from Tesla. Welcome, Ian.

Ian Kettle: Thank you, James.

JM: Now, you were recently at the launch of the CyberCab in September…

IK: Yes, we did an event in Austin, Texas to mark the intro of the CyberCab service in Austin – you could use the app on your phone to order it as a taxi. And it was the first time we had done it with no drivers, no pedals, no steering wheel, the full autonomous experience. And we were able to present some of the updates to the vehicle and explain it again since we revealed it in October 2024.

JM: It feels like the future has arrived in some ways.

IK: That was sort of part of the goal; the design of that program was to really mark a break from conventional car design, to design a vehicle that's first and foremost around a passenger experience as opposed to being a driver's car, which almost every car is designed around. That meant there's a lot of things we did around H-point and IP position and ingress and egress that really focused on it being a great passenger experience as opposed to a driving experience.

JM: We've seen so many autonomous vehicle propositions over the years and they've often taken the form of a sort of a pod or an adapted version of an existing production car. This is a very radical proposition, the CyberCab. Why is that?

IK: When we started out on this program, we had a slightly different goal – we definitely didn't want to do a pod. And a lot of the experience of the vehicle was designed around the passenger, but also around making it a viable business. And that meant designing it partly to a cost-per-mile target and being as efficient as possible. Because at the end of the day, if we want people to take robotaxis – Cybercabs – it needs to make sense to them financially. And that means designing it from day one to be something that was very affordable. We were very keen on democratising the autonomous vehicle experience. And the best way to do that is to make it as affordable as possible. Part of that means making the vehicle smaller and lighter, and definitely much more aerodynamically efficient. It's one of, if not the most efficient vehicles I've ever made, which in turn translates to the customer's paid experience of it as a vehicle.

JM: You shaved a lot of weight off it as well.

IK: I can't remember the actual weight figure for the vehicle, but yeah. And part of that is also only having two seats in the vehicle. Research very clearly showed that the vast majority of journeys were just one or two people at most; we do have a proposition for robotaxi Model Ys as well if you have more than two people. But most of the time you travel in ones or twos, so why carry that extra weight with you, rear seats and the extra length and so forth? The smaller the vehicle is to start with [the better]. It's made from rim technology plastic as opposed to stamped sheet metal. You see that in lightweight sports cars, but we applied a lot of that thinking here in a more passenger-oriented vehicle.

JM: And were you designing for new production methods? Was that part of the remit there?

IK: The core of the remit was having a great user experience and also a vehicle that was able to be economically manufactured and run. Yeah. But in terms of ‘designed for manufacturing’, everything is designed for manufacture when it's being manufactured. There wasn't a specific process that we were following that defined the shape of the vehicle. There were of course some compromises and some challenges along the way by doing a rim-moulded plastic exterior, but it's not like it defined the car.

JM: What was the reception like? I'm very curious.

IK: As far as I know, the reception has been great. From a user's point of view, of course, it's a magical technology. It's got these amazing doors that give you a great ingress/egress experience, too, and a much larger interior screen for entertainment should you want that because you don't have a steering wheel or pedals and things like that. And even down to the IP being slightly further away than in a regular car, you have this real sense of space despite the car being relatively small.

JM: It might be slightly disconcerting the first time you get in a car with no steering wheel. Was there anything you could do design-wise to reassure people that they're in good hands? Was that even possible?

IK: A lot of that is in the UI of the vehicle and also the the app on your phone. Plus a certain amount of trust in the technology. It’s not like we've got to design in very specific things that say, “hey, look, there's no steering wheel, calm down.” You know what you've gotten into here, and I think the magic of it is as soon as you try it – and many people do already in their sort of regular Teslas with Full Self-Drive – as soon as you experience that, you think, wow, this is just something else. It's a MacBook in the age of a typewriter. It’s a completely different experience and a very unique design challenge as an automotive designer who's worked on many conventional car programs. What a privilege it has been to be able to work on something that truly moves the transportation game onwards and offers something people don't have right now. It is as cheap as possible and gives mobility to people who previously wouldn't have had it.

JM: And what next for Tesla? Are there new things on the horizon that you can mention here?

IK: There's no secret that the Road to Launch event is happening next week, and beyond that there's Optimus robot which is ongoing. And of course many vehicle programs, but can't really talk about them here.

JM: Fair enough, we'll keep them under your hat. Ian, thanks very much for sparing some time. Thanks. Always lovely to chat. It is.