A Cybercab Lost Its Outer Door Skin on South Broad Street, and Nobody Has Said Whether It Was Driving Itself
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A Cybercab Lost Its Outer Door Skin on South Broad Street, and Nobody Has Said Whether It Was Driving Itself
Electrek's photos show a gold Cybercab with the driver-side door panel gone and the frame intact; Tesla is not on Pennsylvania's list of certified automated-vehicle operators.
A Tesla Cybercab lost the outer skin of its driver-side door in a crash on South Broad Street in Philadelphia this week, according to photos posted to Reddit and reported on Oct. 7 by Electrek. The cause, the fault and any injuries are unreported.
Electrek's Fred Lambert places the car a little over a mile south of City Hall. The Reddit poster did not see the collision and wrote that it "looked like a low speed incident ripped off the cybercab's left door panel." A dark sedan sat stopped behind the Cybercab; Electrek says it is not clear whether that car was involved.
The photo above is a 2024 showroom display unit at Santana Row, not the Philadelphia car.
What the photos show
The outer skin of the left door is gone, exposing the inner frame, window regulator and wiring. The glass is intact, and the structure underneath "doesn't look bent," Electrek says. There is crumpled rocker trim and scuffing on the rear quarter panel.
Electrek notes that Tesla does not paint the Cybercab. Its body panels are molded plastic with the colour mixed into the material, joined to a plastic backing and held on by fasteners reached from inside. Electrek attributes that description to Lars Moravy, Tesla's engineering lead, and Franz von Holzhausen, its design chief, speaking to Sandy Munro in 2025.
That design cuts two ways, and Electrek says as much: the panel may have come off clean because it was built to, or because it lets go too easily. A set of photographs cannot settle which.
Was anyone driving
This is the open question. Pennsylvania requires a PennDOT certificate of compliance to operate a highly automated vehicle, meaning SAE Level 3 and above. Electrek says PennDOT lists seven certificate holders, that Waymo is cleared for Philadelphia with a driver aboard, and that Tesla is not listed.
So Electrek's reading is that the car was most likely hand-driven or running Tesla's software as a Level 2 driver-assist system with a human behind the wheel. The photos do not show whether this unit had a steering wheel; Electrek says Tesla has been bolting Cybertruck steering wheels into test Cybercabs.
The reporting category matters. Under NHTSA's Standing General Order, a crash involving an automated driving system must be reported even for property damage above a threshold. A Level 2 crash is reported only if someone dies or goes to hospital, an airbag deploys, or a pedestrian or cyclist is hit. If this crash was reported at all, Electrek says it would appear in NHTSA's database as a driver-assist crash with its description redacted.
| Question | What is known | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Where | South Broad Street, about a mile south of City Hall | Electrek |
| Cause and fault | Not reported | Electrek |
| Injuries | No word | Electrek |
| Driverless | Unconfirmed; Tesla not on PennDOT's list | Electrek |
| Tesla statement | None found | Electrek, Inquirer |
How Cybercabs got to Philadelphia
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on Sept. 18 that gold Cybercabs were being photographed in the lot of a Devon Tesla dealership and on City Avenue. Thomas Fitzgerald, the paper's transportation reporter, wrote that Tesla began offering driverless public rides in parts of Austin, Texas, on Sept. 3. The Inquirer says Tesla's corporate media team did not respond to a request for comment on Philadelphia plans, and a person who answered the dealership's sales line declined to discuss the vehicles.
Waymo, by comparison, started manual testing and mapping in Philadelphia in July 2025 and moved to autonomous testing with safety specialists behind the wheel in December. It has not said when it will carry passengers, and PennDOT approval is required before anyone can hail and pay for an autonomous ride.
What would settle it
Three documents would answer the question: a Philadelphia police report, an NHTSA Standing General Order filing, and a PennDOT certificate in Tesla's name. Until one of them appears, the car is a gold Cybercab with a missing door skin and a frame that looks straight.
Related hardware coverage: the Teradyne and Elite Robots cobot settlement and VW's pre-sale price for the ID. Polo GTI.
Sources
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