Elon Musk unveils Robovan: the big surprise from Tesla’s We, Robot event

Elon Musk unveiled a prototype of Tesla’s Robovan Thursday night during the company’s We, Robot event in Los Angeles. The Robovan will be an electric, autonomous vehicle about the size of a bus, designed to transport people in high-density areas. It will carry up to 20 people at a time and also transport cargo, according to Musk.

“We’re going to do this, and this is what it’s going to look like,” Musk said Thursday night as the Robovan rolled toward the stage. That’s probably as much as Musk was willing to say, and we’re not sure much of it is true.

Musk did not say how much the Robovan will cost, how Tesla will produce it, or when it will be released. However, it seems very good.

The Robovan has a retro-futuristic look – somewhere between a bus from The Jetsons and a toaster from the 1950s. It features silver metallic sides with black detailing, and light strips that run parallel to the ground on its sides, with doors coming out of the center. Inside, there are seats and a standing area, and tinted windows. There is no steering wheel because it is independent.

“One of the things we want to do – and we’ve done this with the Cybertruck – we want to change the way the roads look,” Musk said. “The future should look like the future,” he said, repeating an old line.

It looks similar to other purpose-built robots, such as those designed by Zoox and Cruise. Tesla’s only van is bigger. In China, WeRide has built a similar Robobus.

That said, Robovan showed on Thursday that it is just an example. Despite what Musk says, there’s no telling what the real thing will look like or when it will actually come out.

Tesla has been keeping the design of the cars it unveiled on Thursday close to its chest. The only real hint we had was at Tesla’s 2023 Investor Day, when the automaker teased a couple of new cars that appear to be for volume production: One small car that’s now seen as the Cybercab, and a bigger one that we don’t know now. say Robovan is possible.

The stated goal at the time was to produce 20 million cars a year by 2030. That would mean Tesla needs to increase production and sales about 15 times by 2022.

During Thursday’s event, Musk did not reveal any plans to build new manufacturing facilities or remodel existing facilities to accommodate the Cybercab or Robovan. He also didn’t give much in the way of Robovan timelines, though he did predict that the Cybercab will go into production in 2026 or 2027.