Robocar Startup 'Tensor' Unveils Luxury Self-Drive Car For 2026

Forbes

2 days ago

Tensor is a Silicon Valley based startup that plans to be the first company to sell a true robocar (Link goes live at 10am PDT) with 'eyes off' self-driving ability and a steering wheel that folds away and is replaced by a screen. While most entrants have worked to first make a robotaxi to provide ride service, Tensor aims to start with a high-end electric vehicle consumers can buy, and either drive themselves, or allow it to do the driving. Able to operate without the cloud, they promise luxury, an agentic experience that does your bidding, and unlike so many vendors, a promise of privacy from being tracked.
The vehicle is large and the design is sleek, though adorned with the largest number of sensors I've yet seen. This includes 37 cameras, 5 custom-designed lidars, 11 custom radars, and an array of microphones, ultrasonics, collision sensors, water detectors, data radios and more. Most of the sensors have built in cleaning methods and left with clear sightlines for good visibility. The vehicle was designed from the ground up to be a personal robocar, but will be made by Vietnamese automaker Vinfast.
Tensor is a rebranding of the U.S. portion of AutoX, a Chinese/American robotaxi project which launched self-driving service in the suburbs of Shenzhen several years ago with a large fleet, showing off video of over 1,000 robotaxis, but has generated minimal news for 2 years. Tensor says it is an 'evolution' of AutoX aimed at personal cars. AutoX was one of the earliest companies to deploy vehicles with no safety driver in China, but had faced controversy over allegations of operation without active safety intervention controls in the USA.
Tensor's design focus has been to spare few expenses to get out there first and do what was necessary to maximize safety--which is needed to be early. Tensor/AutoX began in 2016, and has had California test permits (including for unmanned operation ) since 2000. Their latest software approach is machine learning centric but not end-to-end, rather relying on a collected series of ML-based tools and their own transformer based 'Tensor Foundation Model.'
Taxi vs. Personal Car
They currently decline to comment on pricing, which is frustrating for a luxury product, but it will be more than existing luxury EVs like the Lucid Air, which do not self-drive. They have also decided to focus on sales to consumers rather than taxi service. Most self-driving teams doing cars, including AutoX, have started with ride-hail. There are a number of strong reasons for that. A taxi need only drive one city to be a workable business, and it comes home every night, remaining under the close watch and control of its maker. A consumer car must provide strong value in most major cities, or the market is too small. With no depot to visit the car or its owner must handle everything. Tensor will not be able to drive every street upon release, but plans to handle a worthwhile subset, such as highways and arterials in non-snowy places. Owners can drive the car conventionally on roads it doesn't self-drive on.
Tesla also has ambitions to sell a personal self-driving car, but they recently decided to try a taxi first, in a limited area. Tesla's offerings can't self-drive at present, and instead operate in driver assist mode with a supervising human. For the last 8 years, Tesla has predicted their car will self-drive unsupervised within a short time, and this prediction was made again next week, but skepticism is high after the many failed predictions. Many other companies have showed concept personally owned self-driving cars, including features like fold-away steering wheels and reversible seats, but nothing has been announced for production. Tensor hopes to be the first, claiming they will ship in the 2nd half of 2026.
Privacy
An interesting, and sadly unusual feature of the Tensor is an effort to protect driver privacy. All other robocar designs are constantly in touch with the cloud, relaying all the car's activities to it. The cars have interior cameras which can feed video back to HQ (though Waymo and others say this is only turned on in unusual situations.) The Tensor also talks to the cloud for the usual reasons of updating maps and software and fetching traffic and weather, and it has the ablity for remote operations assistance that all robocars have, but the owner can turn that off, and give the car any 'assist' from the controls. In self-drive mode, the yoke wheel folds into the dashboard, and the center screen slides over to cover it; the pedals retract into the footwell. The interior of the vehicle is spacious and uncluttered. Tensor says in this mode, even though the vehicle can self-drive, the owner's data stays with the car and is not uploaded.
This is a refreshing take. It would be nice to see more attention to privacy not just from consumer cars but from robotaxis. Today's transportation world is mostly private and anonymous. Even taxis used to be summoned with a street hail and paid with cash. That world is vanishing, replaced by a world where all your travels are recorded. Of course, robotaxis need a way to know if a passenger soils or damages the car and to get payment if that happens (or simply tell you if you left your Stradavarius behind) but there are ways to still do that with intermediate escrow that protect privacy and erase information when it's no longer needed.
Interesting Hardware
The vehicle is entirely drive-by-wire, with multiple redundant systems, including 3 braking systems, to allow this to meet automotive safety standards. Most cars have some physical link as a backup, but when self-driving that doesn't help. Some of the cameras are 17 megapixel, higher resolution than is typical. Radars have 1.1 degree imaging resolution which is fairly good. The car has cameras under the vehicle, which would presumably detect anything or anybody underneath the vehicle, a failure which sunk Cruise. Water sensors will detect if the car drives in water that's too deep, something we've seen a few other robocars fail on. Tensor's LIDAR claims very dense resolution, though I did not get a chance to personally examine its results. It includes a spinning 360 degree 1500nm unit on top, and a variety of smaller short range units on the sides for full visibility.
Also present on the front bumpers are small screens at the corners which are used to show pedestrians that the vehicle sees them, and any intentions the vehicle has (like doors about to open.) While a robocars absolutely must see every pedestrian around it in every dirction at all times--or its badly broken--many people don't know that and so are comforted with a reminder.
Software
The Tensor's hardware suite is impressive but expensive. Tensor says it improves safety and this will help them come to market first. No matter how good the hardware is, however, the software is the key. I rode in the vehicle in a parking lot, but this showed only simple operations and doesn't allow judgment of the quality of the self-driving stack. Tensor built their own, on top of tools and hardware from their partner down the street, Nvidia. But most cars have this. We'll need to see millions of miles of test data to judge if the self-driving system is safe enough to bet your life on.
Tensor didn't say, but presumably the code is not based on the AutoX stack, as new regulations starting in 2027 forbid Chinese software in self-driving systems.