Elon Musk Announces Creation Of Autonomous ‘Cybercab’ And ‘Robovan’ Vehicles

Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced the development of two autonomous vehicles Thursday night in California, hailing the vehicles as the future of transportation.

During an event called “We, Robot” in Burbank, Musk said that his company would be rolling out the “Robotaxi” or “Cybercab” and the “Robovan,” both of which would be fully autonomous vehicles. The Robotaxi will be a smaller vehicle with no pedals or steering wheel while the Robovan will be designed for public transportation or movement of goods.

“We’ll move from supervised Full Self-Driving to unsupervised Full Self-Driving, where you can fall asleep and wake up at your destination,” said Musk, who arrived at the event in a Robovan. “It’s going to be a glorious future.”

Robotaxi & Robovan pic.twitter.com/pI2neyJBSL

— Tesla (@Tesla) October 11, 2024

Musk said that he had brought 50 fully autonomous vehicles to the event, which also highlighted his Tesla bot “Optimus,” which will be humanoid robots designed to help people with household chores and errands.

When available for the public, the Robotaxi would cost customers around $30,000, according to Musk, who said he hopes to start producing them by 2027, CNBC reported. Musk said that the Robovan, which is still in development, would be able to hold up to 20 people.

“Now can you imagine going down the street and you see this coming toward you? That’d be sick,” he said. “This can carry up to 20 people and it can also transport goods so you can configure it for goods transport within a city or transport of up to 20 people at a time.”

Musk said he believed that the Robovan would increase safety and solve problems with heavy traffic in densely populated areas.

“The Robovan is what is going to solve for high density,” he said. “So if you want to take a sports team somewhere or you’re looking to really get the cost of travel down to five, 10 cents a mile, then you can use the Robovan.”

Musk said the products were part of his overall vision for innovation and technological advancement.

“One of the things we want to do, and you’ve seen this with the Cybertruck, is we want to change the look of the roads,” he added. “The future should look like the future.”