Eduard Huma
Unplugged Performance used April Fools’ Day to sell a wild idea. The company claimed it was sending a driverless Tesla Cybercab up Pikes Peak. For a moment, the stunt had the right mix of nonsense and detail to sound real.
Then the joke gave itself away.
The build exists only as a rendering, not as a working race machine. Still, Unplugged did not keep the fantasy small. It gave the project a name, Goldmember, a nod to the 2002 comedy Austin Powers in Goldmember, where Mike Myers played the Dutch villain.
The fake racer also came with a backstory. Three years ago, Unplugged sent the Dark Helmet, based on the Model S Plaid, up the mountain with a huge aero package. This time, the company said it moved that same aero approach, plus Plaid-level force, into the autonomous Cybercab.
So the tiny robotaxi ended up with a giant carbon-fiber rear wing with dual-plane endplates, a front splitter assembly, a full carbon diffuser, and canards. The design also keeps the butterfly doors. A pink Casa Bonita graphic sits on the rear wing, which rises high above the tail. The body wears a gold finish, though only in digital form.
The numbers were even louder than the shape. Unplugged said the Cybercab uses a tri-motor setup rated at 1,020 horsepower and 1,050 pound-feet of torque. The claim continues with a 0 to 60 mph run in under 1.5 seconds. That alone tells you where this story lives.
The rest of the spec sheet stays busy. The imagined hillclimb car weighs 4,200 pounds, or 1,905 kilograms, and would tackle the 19-mile, 31-kilometer course on 19-inch Unplugged Performance UP-03 Pikes Peak Spec forged wheels. Yokohama Advan A005 tires wrap those wheels. A custom suspension sits underneath, though the company said it was developed for this stunt only in the digital world.
Braking, at least on paper, comes from a Stage 3 S-APEX Brake System with six-piston monoblock calipers and carbon-ceramic rotors. The joke keeps going there too, because the car reportedly relies fully on its Full Self-Driving: Hillclimb system.
That is the whole point. The car is not real, the run is not real, and the record will not happen. But the prank works because Unplugged picked details that sound close enough to modern EV madness.
For one day, a Tesla Cybercab race car with no driver felt almost believable. Then April 1 did what April 1 always does.
Tesla Cybercab – Photo Gallery
