Cybercab has hidden virtual joystick for manual driving

Summary from electrek

A Tesla Cybercab rider found something in the robotaxi: a manual driving mode. When he got in, the touchscreen was showing a virtual joystick to drive the car by hand.

Tesla built the Cybercab with no steering wheel and no pedals. But it apparently still has a way to drive it manually, and you do it by dragging a finger across a screen.

Matthew Skrzypczak posted a video on X on September 7 showing his Cybercab in an unusual state.

“When I got in the vehicle, the display was in a different configuration with a virtual joystick for manual driving,” he wrote, adding that he had “a feeling I wasn’t supposed to see this” and then tried to drive the car with it anyway.

The clip shows the Cybercab’s single touchscreen split in two. The left side is a driving interface built around an on-screen joystick, with a prompt to “Close cabin doors” and buttons for opening the doors and calling support. The right side shows a live surround-camera view of the car parked in what looks like a parking lot – though the side cameras appear to be frozen on a frame from a previous location at a Supercharger.

What it shows is the workaround Tesla built for a car with no physical controls. A Cybercab still has to be moved by a person sometimes, whether that’s repositioning it in a depot or nudging it out of a tight spot, and with no wheel and no pedals, an on-screen joystick is how you do it. Tesla has never shown this mode publicly.

That could be very useful for a private owner. I hope they leave it there. But we would need to have a breaking control also.

We saw a game controller being used early on too. If you've used FSD for any amount of time you realize that sometimes you just need to manually move it a few feet here or there.

I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla gave away wired controllers out to first responders in cities where they have a big Cybercab presence.