It’s Oct. 10, and Tesla has finally shown off its vision for a robotic taxi of the future, imaginatively called the Robotaxi. It kinda looks like a Volkswagen XL1 from Alibaba. Weird, but a neat concept for taking two people from one place to another place. However, what if you theoretically need to carry more than yourself and someone else? Well, this is the Tesla Robovan, and it’s something else.
Right off the bat, the Robovan looks like a fever dream, like a blend between an Apple mouse and a toaster and the character design of Robots, that animated film. Enclosed wheels, full-length strakes, a true monobox silhouette, surely there’s no way this could make production, right?
Well, at Tesla’s big robotaxi presentation on Thursday, that’s exactly what Elon Musk claimed. The long-term plan, allegedly, is that the Robovan will be there for sports teams, church excursions, mobile orgies, you name it. Alright, maybe the last one wasn’t alluded to, but come on. It’s theoretically a van without a driver. People will be attempt to procreate in there.
Tesla did also unveil a rendering of a robotic vacuum but something tells me that won’t be enough for certain situations. Wait, doesn’t the Boring Company sell flamethrowers?
Like the Cybercab, Tesla expects the Robovan to have no steering wheel, no pedals, no traditional controls of any sort. It begs the question: What would happen if it gets stuck? Presumably, in all of Tesla’s autonomous forecasts, there will be intervention from the cloud or something, but this thing’s still a stretch as far as timelines go, so who knows?
Hell, we don’t even have a rough guideline of when Tesla expects the Robovan to be roaming the streets of America, which is uncharacteristic considering the firm’s, um, optimistic timelines for future products. Has anyone seen the second-generation Tesla Roadster recently? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
There are still an unbelievable number of kinks to be ironed out in order for the Robovan to even be feasible for production. We’re talking regulatory approval, production ramping hell, feasibility of manufacturing, and even whether or not the vision-only approach to Level 4 autonomy will even work. Still, on form factor alone, I’m interested in seeing where this goes. America needs more weird vans, and this is definitely a weird van.
(Photo credits: Tesla)
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Cybervan DOWN BY THE RIVER!
More cyberCRAP
This crap on wheels is just more Musk vaporware.
Interior’s nice, exterior is horrible. Doubt it’ll be on a road, so it doesn’t matter.
About right. And it didn’t help with the stock either!
I like the art deco look, and at least this one is trying to take advantage of the possibility of driverless cars – whereas the RoboTaxi just looks like a regular car, minus the steering wheel.
Why doesn’t Tesla just label their show cars as show cars? (rhetorical question)
No mention of I robot?