Tesla CyberCab debuts as a robot cab under $30,000.

Tesla unveiled late Thursday its long-awaited robot cab, which the company calls the CyberCab.

The debut took place on the enclosed grounds of Warner Bros. studios in Burbank, California, where a van counterpart called the Robovan also made a surprise debut.

Both self-driving vehicles lack a steering wheel and pedals, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk said at the reveal that both are destined for production with no changes to the vehicle design planned.

In his typical style, Musk did not discuss details, but said that the Cyber Cab, a sleek two-door hatchback, is targeted to arrive “before 2027” and will be priced under $30,000.

The CyberCab will target both individual and fleet buyers, and, according to Musk, in the long run, the cost per mile of travel for owners could drop to about 20 cents per person, though he did not provide a breakdown of that cost. He estimated that the average operating cost of a modern bus per passenger is $1

and that the average cost of a bus per passenger is $3.50.

Musk said that since the robovan can transport up to 20 people, the cost per mile could eventually drop to 5 to 10 cents per person.

Tesla also released a video showing the vehicle charging autonomously using inductive charging and cleaning the interior using autonomous cleaning stations. Musk then said that the technology being developed for Robotaxis could be transferred to Tesla's planned humanoid helper robot known as Optimus. Tesla provided a prototype of Optimus to attendees at the event.

Tesla has promised since early 2016 that Tesla owners will eventually be able to rent out their EVs as robot cabs through an Uber-style service called the Tesla Network. When Tesla announced the Tesla Network, Tesla said that owners could offer their EVs to friends and family outside of the service, but that any use of the EVs for revenue purposes would only be possible through the Tesla Network. Musk said in 2019 that Tesla would receive a portion of the revenue generated, hinting at the time at a figure of 25-30%.

However, Tesla has yet to demonstrate a self-driving system that can function without constant monitoring. Tesla's Autopilot with full self-drive only ranks at Level 2 on the SAE automated driving capability scale. Level 3 is the first stage of unsupervised driving, and only Mercedes-Benz's DrivePilot system currently ranks as Level 3 for private cars. On Thursday, Musk said that an update to the FSD is forthcoming and that as early as next year, initially only in California and Texas, vehicles with the feature will be able to drive in unsupervised mode.

Public robo-taxi services already offered, such as Alphabet's Waymo One and Baidu's Apollo Go, rank Level 4 on the scale. Level 4 self-driving cars can drive themselves, but there are still conditions, typically within an area surrounded by a pre-mapped geo-fence. Level 5 is the ultimate goal, a self-driving car that is as capable as a human driver and can safely get from point A to point B without human intervention.