Elon Musk saw the end of car ownership coming a decade ago.
📜 July 20, 2016, Master Plan Part Deux:
"Since most cars are only in use by their owner for 5% to 10% of the day, the fundamental economic utility of a true self-driving car is likely to be several times that of a car which is not."
He laid out the whole model: summon your Tesla from anywhere, and "sleep, read or do anything else enroute to your destination."
🐎 April 22, 2019, Autonomy Day:
"If you buy a car that does not have the hardware for full self-driving, it is like buying a horse."
🎬 October 10, 2024, We, Robot: Elon Musk unveiled Cybercab. No steering wheel, no pedals, built only to move people. He put its long-run operating cost at about 20 cents a mile.
Look at what we pay today. AAA's 2026 study puts the average cost of owning and running a new car at $12,863 a year, or $1,071.92 a month. Most of the day, that car just sits there.
And now the vision is on the road:
✅ Unsupervised Tesla Robotaxi rides in 7 cities: Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Tampa
✅ 1,244 vehicles registered to Tesla Robotaxi in Texas, 573 of them Cybercabs
✅ Cybercab rides started in Austin and expand to Dallas this month
✅ Oct 2026, Elon Musk: "The vast majority of the Cybercab stuff will be essentially Tesla-owned and transport-as-a-service."
The legacy media spent years calling it fantasy. Today it's an app you open in Texas and Florida.
No car payment, no insurance bill, no parking hunt. You tap, ride and go on with your life.
The future of the car may not be owning one at all.
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