An Amazon Prime Air cargo jet ripped right past the landing zone at the Miami International Airport on Sunday afternoon, struggling to stop itself in time before overrunning the runway and crashing into a cleaning crew and a nearby SUV.
It was a tragic incident, killing five innocent people.
The Boeing 767-300 also barreled right through a chain-link fence that was protecting a highly unusual lot of vehicles: photographs of the scene show the dented nose of the airliner just a few dozen feet away from a kennel of parked Tesla Cybercabs.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has banked the future success of his EV maker on the gold-colored self-driving vehicles, which are too small to fit more than two passengers and lack both steering wheels or pedals. Their sudden appearance in a story about a deadly airliner disaster had the billionaire taken aback. However, instead of offering his condolences after the tragedy, Musk simply tweeted the word “Weird” in response.
The peculiar cameo also led to plenty of questions over Tesla’s plans to roll out the cars outside of Austin. Just last week, the Cybercabs were deployed for the first time in the Texas city, but the company has yet to announce any imminent launches in Miami.
Regulators from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration watched closely following last week’s deployment, which comes just shy of two years after Tesla first showed off its Cybercab. As Bloomberg notes, the light on details event was “uncharacteristically low-key,” offering no livestream or media coverage.
The “Cybercab event was largely a bust,” tweeted Future Fund Advisors co-founder Gary Black. “The launch offered little detail and key questions remained unanswered.”
Indeed, regulatory approval is hazy for vehicles without any traditional driver controls, a topic that’s especially pertinent to Tesla. Musk has bet the company’s entire future on the success of its Cybercabs and its humanoid robot, dubbed Optimus.
With neither showing any signs of a significant public rollout any time soon, Wall Street is bound to keep asking some tough questions.
More on the Cybercab: Tesla Loses Trademark to “Cybercab” Due to Its Own Staggering Incompetence
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