Elon Musk Announces Development of Fully Automated Taxi, Van

Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced the development of two fully autonomous vehicles, the “Robotaxi” (also called the “Cybercab”) and the “Robovan,” during an event in California this week.

“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.”

The Robotaxi, a compact vehicle without pedals or a steering wheel, is expected to cost around $30,000 and could begin production by 2027.

The Robovan, designed for public transportation and goods movement, will be capable of carrying up to 20 passengers.

“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 emphasized that these innovations aim to improve safety and alleviate traffic congestion 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.”

“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.”