Tesla Reinvents the Steering Wheel Once Again with Hidden Cybercab Joystick Controls

• A Cybercab rider got a behind-the-scenes look at how Tesla drives its driverless vehicle.
• The vehicle’s screen was stuck on a view showing a joystick-like controller likely used for manual moves.
• This follows Tesla’s previous steering-wheel innovations, including the yoke and the stalk-free steering column.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve been wondering how Tesla’s Cybercab, which is truly devoid of physical driving controls, gets moved around when it’s off duty or something goes terribly wrong. Courtesy of a user on X, another Elon Musk property, we have the answer: There’s a hidden screen with a joystick-like controller for steering, acceleration, and reversing.

A Look Behind the Curtains

Apparently, the special screen wasn’t so hidden when this rider boarded a Cybercab in Austin, Texas. While the controls were visible and moved under their finger, they were not responsive. The joystick portion, which has a center circle with the word “hold” on it, appears to control the steering along with forward and reverse acceleration. There’s a horn button, and one simply labeled “Stop,” and we’d imagine recentering the controller’s digital joystick activates regenerative braking.

The Cybercab is one of the few vehicles to be deployed without a physical steering implement of any kind or pedals for acceleration or braking. It is currently the subject of a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigation examining Tesla’s self-certification that the vehicle complies with federal safety standards despite lacking traditional human controls. NHTSA is working to revise several autonomous-vehicle-related standards, but those rulemakings are not yet final.

Yoke 2.0?

This isn’t Tesla’s first steering-wheel rodeo. The oft-derided steering yoke that debuted on the Model S and Model X, and is the only way to steer a Cybertruck, controls a fully steer-by-wire system but retains a 3-D physical embodiment. After making it standard on the refreshed Model S and X, Tesla made a regular ol’ round wheel a no-cost option. But even that setup had its quirks, as it did away with traditional stalks to control things like the wipers or gear selection, handling the former with buttons on the wheel and the latter through either a predictive system or a slider on the center display.

And the Cybercab isn’t the first driverless vehicle to use a joystick for human intervention. NAVYA shuttles, operated by Beep and others, used an actual Xbox controller for human takeovers. Life imitates art imitating life, or something.

What Is Your Major Function?

We don’t know exactly when these controls are meant to be used, but tasks like end-of-line production checks and moving vehicles around a depot or holding lot come to mind. The apparently frozen images from the Cybercab’s fender cameras offer a clue—they show a bank of Tesla Superchargers, so it’s possible the manual override was last used when topping off the battery before service and the screen got stuck in an in-between state.

There’s also a possibility that these controls could be surfaced to first responders who need to move the vehicle for safety reasons. (Remember when San Francisco firefighters had to break the window of a Cruise AV to stop it before it ran over a hose?)

Now that we know the Cybercab has this virtual controller, the next logical question is, of course: Can it run Doom?

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Ever since David was a wee Car and Driver intern, he has kept a spreadsheet listing all the vehicles he’s driven and tested. David really likes spreadsheets. He can parallel-park a school bus and once drove a Lincoln Town Car 63 mph in reverse. After taking a break from journalism to work on autonomous vehicles, he’s back writing for this and other automotive publications. When David’s not searching for the perfect used car, you can find him sampling the latest in gimmicky, limited-edition foodstuffs.