Tesla’s gold Cybercab spends its last weekend under Shanghai’s Oriental Pearl Tower on Saturday and Sunday, and its next stop is a much bigger stage. Once the display closes on Nov. 1, the car is headed to the China International Import Expo (CIIE), where Tesla is opening its first dedicated zone in the expo’s Lingang showcase with a production Cybercab, the newest gold Optimus and a Robovan-themed display.
Tesla China promoted the Pearl Tower stop on its official Weibo account on Friday. The Cybercab is parked in the tower’s city plaza in Lujiazui from Oct. 29 to Nov. 1, and Tesla urged people to come take a photo with it before the last two days run out. Tesla’s Asia account posted the same scene on X on Saturday. Shanghai outlet The Paper sat in the car for its report and said that afterward the Cybercab will “drive into” the ninth CIIE.
Five cities, then the expo
The Pearl Tower display is part of what Tesla China calls its Cybercab national static tour. According to the schedule Tesla China posted on Weibo, shared by the TeslaZoa account and reported by Cybercab.News, the car has visited MixC World in Suzhou, One Avenue in Shenzhen (Oct. 16–25) and a Longhu mall in Ningbo (Oct. 22–27). The Shanghai stop overlaps with the tour’s last city, Chengdu, where a Cybercab is at Taikoo Li from Oct. 30 to Nov. 8. The China leg opened in September at HKRI Taikoo Hui in Shanghai.
It’s a showcase, not a launch. Visitors can look but not ride, and Tesla China has described the tour as static. The Tesla tracking account Teslas.R.Us reports that Tesla China has no plans to sell the Cybercab or run Robotaxi rides in China for now. Stops also let people test-drive the Model 3 and Model Y and learn about FSD (Supervised), according to the tour poster.
What Tesla is bringing to CIIE
The ninth CIIE runs Nov. 5–10 at the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai), the cloverleaf-shaped venue locals call the “four-leaf clover.” Tesla’s space sits inside the Lingang New Area’s showcase at the east end of Hall 3, a 2,700-square-meter zone that is the largest single exhibit area at this year’s expo, according to China Securities Journal and a Shangguan News preview reposted on the official CIIE website.
This is the first time Tesla has had its own zone inside the Lingang showcase, which makes sense, since Giga Shanghai is the Lingang area’s flagship project. The exhibit list from the organizers includes:
- the production Cybercab
- the newly launched high-performance Model Y
- the latest-generation gold Optimus humanoid robot
- core components of the Megablock storage system, plus Powerwall
- a premium display area styled after the Robovan, Tesla’s driverless people-mover
The organizers say Optimus robots will act out scenes such as factory work, carrying luggage and walking a dog. The Shangguan preview also notes that Tesla passed 10 million cumulative EVs built worldwide in July, with Giga Shanghai supplying nearly half of Tesla’s global deliveries. That’s the point of the display. Shanghai isn’t only where Tesla sells cars in China. It’s where a huge share of all Teslas come from.
Optimus made separate news this weekend, too. Elon Musk just said “No” to a report that consumer Optimus reservations open in December.
The EVX Take
Japan saw the same car this fall, with a lot less fanfare. Tesla Japan ran a Cybercab Japan Tour at four venues in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya from Sept. 11 to 28, behind barriers with no rides, and the start of any Robotaxi service in Japan was still undecided, Touch Lab reported. China is getting a two-month, five-city road show plus a state-backed expo slot with Optimus and the Robovan. That tells you where Tesla sees near-term scale. It also reflects China’s market, where local robotaxi services already carry paying riders in several cities, so Tesla has to keep its autonomy story visible there. For Japan, the useful signal is that both countries are getting static displays and no ride dates. Whichever market Tesla moves from “look” to “ride” first, it’s not likely to be decided at a trade show.
The expo opens on Thursday, Nov. 5. Expect Shanghai crowds to do what crowds in Suzhou and Shenzhen did and stand three deep around a car with no steering wheel.
Sources: Tesla China on Weibo (via Sina), Tesla Asia on X, The Paper, China Securities Journal, CIIE (Shangguan News), CIIE notice, Cybercab.News, Tesla Japan (PR Times), Touch Lab.
— The EVX News team
Featured image: A gold Tesla Cybercab on display with its butterfly doors open at the Mall of Berlin, December 2024. Photo: Avda / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped).
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