Elon Musk unveiled a prototype of Tesla’s Robovan on Thursday evening in the course of the firm’s We, Robotic occasion in Los Angeles. The Robovan will probably be an electrical, autonomous automobile roughly the scale of a bus, designed for transporting individuals round excessive density areas. It is going to carry as much as 20 individuals at a time and in addition transport items, based on Musk.
“We’re going to make this, and it’s going to look like that,” mentioned Musk on Thursday evening because the Robovan rolled in direction of heart stage. That’s about as a lot as Musk was prepared to say, and we’re not even positive that a lot is true.
Musk didn’t point out how a lot the Robovan would price, how Tesla would produce it, or when it’ll come out. Nonetheless, it does look fairly cool.
The Robovan has a retro-futuristic look – someplace between a bus from The Jetsons and a toaster from the Fifties. It options silver metallic sides with black particulars, and strips of sunshine operating parallel to the bottom alongside its sides, with doorways that slide out from the center. Inside, there are seats and room to face, with tinted home windows all through. There isn’t any steering wheel, because it’s autonomous.
“One of the things we want to do – and we’ve done this with the Cybertruck – is we want to change the look of the roads,” mentioned Musk. “The future should look like the future,” he mentioned, repeating an outdated line.
It appears much like different purpose-built robotaxis, like these designed by Zoox and Cruise. Solely Tesla’s van is way larger. In China, WeRide has constructed an identical Robobus.
That mentioned, the Robovan confirmed on Thursday is simply a prototype. Regardless of what Musk says, there’s no telling what the actual factor will seem like or when it’ll truly come out.
Tesla had saved the design of the autos it launched on Thursday fairly near the chest. The one actual trace we had was from Tesla’s 2023 Investor Day, when the automaker teased a few new autos that gave the impression to be designed for quantity manufacturing: One smaller automobile that seems now to be the Cybercab, and a bigger one which we are able to now say is probably going the Robovan.
The acknowledged objective on the time was to provide 20 million autos per yr by 2030. That may imply that Tesla wants to extend manufacturing and gross sales by about 15 instances from 2022.
Throughout Thursday’s occasion, Musk didn’t define any plans for constructing new manufacturing services or retooling current services to accommodate both the Cybercab or the Robovan. He additionally didn’t present a lot in the way in which of timelines for the Robovan, although he predicted the Cybercab would begin manufacturing in 2026 or 2027.
