Tesla unveils Robovan, a 20-seat autonomous passenger/cargo van

Tesla held its Robotaxi event tonight to introduce a whole new vehicle that will function exclusively as a driverless vehicle. But in addition to the Robotaxi, it also unveiled another robo-vehicle – an autonomous van that can be used for either 20-person mass transit or for cargo hauling tasks.

The “We, Robot” event was primarily expected to focus on the upcoming 2-seat Robotaxi, with an expected update on Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot.

We got updates on both of those, with Robotaxis shuttling passengers around the Warner Bros. backlot where the event was held, and Optimus robots serving drinks and handing out goodie bags to attendees.

But another rumor was about a potential “Robovan.” We talked about this briefly before the event in our Electrek watch party, and there have been various rumors for years, with Tesla supposedly making a 12-passenger van for Boring Co. tunnels and seeing a leak of a peoplemover prototype in recent years.

And today we saw the first glimpse of what the final version might feel like, as it pulled up and emptied several occupants during the event.

We didn’t get much information about the van, except that it will be capable of carrying 20 people (though the above photos show only 14 seats), or also be capable of carrying cargo. The configuration we saw was the people-carrying version, and Tesla has put up several photos on its website to see what the interior of the van might look like.

These are just the passenger configuration – we don’t have any photos of the cargo configuration yet. Although the passenger configuration looks to have significant cargo space available (this could certainly be useful for something like an airport shuttle).

Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated that the Robotaxi would be able to get the cost of transport down to around 20 cents a mile, but that the Robovan would take that even further, down to 5-10 cents a mile.

A vehicle like this could be useful for shuttle routes that need frequent pickups (like airport or student shuttles), for municipalities that don’t have enough ridership for a normal 80-passenger bus, and of course for city last-mile delivery in a cargo configuration.

Musk also repeated his line that “the future should look like the future,” which is certainly apparent in the design of the Robovan, which looks kind of familiar…

The design of the Robovan is certainly quite out-there, but given Tesla’s history with out-there concepts, it might actually come to fruition in a state somewhat like this.

However, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a change in ground clearance. It seems doubtful that the perhaps ~1-2 inch ground clearance on the demo vehicle will be particularly useful on city roads….

Unlike the Robotaxi, Tesla did not share a launch date for the Robovan. While Musk said the Robotaxi would be available in the next two years, he gave no date for the Robovan.

Electrek’s Take

One thing that the Robotaxi has been criticized for is its number of seats. While 2 seats is enough for a lot of driving tasks, you’re not going to be able to bring a whole family, or a bunch of friends, etc.

And adding a bunch of 2-seat cars to the road does nothing to reduce congestion, because we’ll still end up with about the same average vehicle occupancy as we have right now – or maybe even less occupancy because you wouldn’t have the occasional 3-5 person vehicle. Which could even mean more congestion.

But the Robovan offers the promise of being able to carry an actual significant number of people, and with its larger capacity, deadhead miles might be reduced as well because it could run hop-on hop-off routes.

I could certainly see this running on any number of smaller shuttle routes that would benefit from frequent pickups. There’s a summer shuttle where I grew up in California which just runs people to and from the beach to help alleviate parking issues, and this would be perfect for that. Or how about the new electric shuttles at Zion National Park.

But like every Tesla promise, this one needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

After all, Tesla plans to change the world in 6 huge ways next year already (Robotaxi, Semi, an affordable EV, next-gen Roadster, unsupervised FSD, and Optimus), and now we have yet another unreleased product to add to that pile. And most of those existing ones have been pushed back multiple times. I guess at least Robovan can’t be pushed back, if it doesn’t have a date yet to begin with.

Tesla also showed a vision of the future it wants tonight, with parks taking the place of parking lots in various urban settings.

Which is all well and good, except that the CEO who presented this vision has recently donated $180 million to a candidate who wants to harm EVs, and who just today said he is “concerned” about autonomous vehicles and would ban some of them from the road if he wins. Odd horse to hitch yourself to, really.

As for the Robovan, we only saw it pull up and park, it didn’t shuttle people around during the night, beyond the initial pul up. The Robotaxi was at least driving people around, albeit in a heavily mapped area at low speeds, rather than in a real world situation with all the unexpected nonsense that comes up.

Funny thing though, I actually think the Robovan might be more possible than Robotaxi from an autonomy perspective, because these sorts of vehicles are more likely to run a set route, and thus can have a more limited operational space which is easier to program for. So it almost seems like it could/should come sooner than Robotaxi, which will need to essentially be SAE level 5 capable (whereas a set route would definitionally be level 4).

And if it does happen (again, big grains of salt here), the more mass-transit-focused nature of this is more exciting to me than Robotaxi. We have to cut congestion and sprawl, so having vehicles that can help to enable this is quite important. For certain cities, where subways or light rail are unfeasible for whatever reason, a mid-size electric shuttle like this could be a fantastic way to clean up the roads.

Now, let’s see if it ever happens…..