Tesla Robovan / Bus – Everything We Know

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Tesla brought out something not many expected at its Robotaxi event—the Robovan. It’s a fairly large vehicle, and just like the Cybercab, it's fully autonomous: there is no driver’s seat, steering wheel, or pedals.

In its default configuration, the Robovan can seat up to 20 passengers, and Tesla has already envisioned multiple other uses for it, including package delivery, RVing, and others.

So, get your futuristic bus pass ready, and let’s take a ride to see what the Robovan is bringing!

Exterior

The Robovan takes Art Deco – the classic 1950’s style, to the future. It's a spectacular showcase vehicle and doesn’t look like anything you would ever expect to be pulling up to the curb to pick people up. The Robovan looks almost like a train or tram engine and has a sleek front with no visible windshield, and the wheels are tucked underneath the body, where you can’t see them.

It’s a painted aluminum shell, just like the Cybercab, but also mixed with glass. The glass is tinted dark from the exterior – so you can’t really see inside, affording a fairly high level of privacy to those in the vehicle.

One of the most interesting things about the Robovan is its super low ground clearance. It looked like it was floating mere inches off the ground when it pulled up at, We, Robot. According to Elon Musk, this super-low clearance is achieved by having an automatic load-levelling suspension that raises and lowers based on road conditions.

This means that the Robovan will be able to traverse obstacles such as speedbumps and potholes – and that this feature is likely to make its way to FSD sometime in the future. While FSD can already (mostly) correctly identify speedbumps, it cannot identify other obstacles on the road, such as debris or potholes. Having FSD be able to identify and avoid potholes to smoothen the ride would help to improve the comfort of the experience.

The Art-Deco aesthetic is back!

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Interior

The interior is quite spacious – it's able to seat up to 20 passengers in its maximum configuration. In a bus or passenger van format, the Robovan could easily be used to replace short-route buses or, with increased frequency – compete against a full-size 40-seat bus.

Tesla also intends for the Robovan to be used in a delivery capability, as it will be available to order in a format without any seating, which provides a fairly spacious interior for package handling on last-mile and local routes. It could conceivably be a competent competitor to large vans once FSD can reach a fully autonomous state.

Beyond that, Tesla also sees the Robovan being fitted for things such as Tesla Service, RVing, or any other use for vehicles with large interior spaces. There’s a lot of open space on the interior, so we’re looking forward to seeing what ideas people come up with. Maybe a mobile diner?

As per Elon, it is very easy to see out of the Robovan, as the dark windows seem to be one-way tints. Some interior videos, like the one below, also show just how much visibility is afforded to passengers. And those big glass doors? They slide open. It seems that the Robovan has the same set of doors on both sides, but all the pictures showing it off have it only opening on the street side (right side), with right-hand-drive here in North America.

Back to the passenger configuration – the interior showed off was in a clean and classic Tesla white, with lots of interior lighting and HVAC on the interior ceiling. There is a bench seat at either end of the cabin, and then a pair and single seat with an aisle dividing them. The configuration shown was symmetrical and only seated 14.

The van also features a large screen at either end of the cabin, which could be used for entertainment or route information. Tesla didn’t provide any detail on these displays, but they appear fairly large.

The interior of the Robovan.

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Step inside the Tesla Robovan pic.twitter.com/h4qqmW8yyq

— Nic Cruz Patane (@niccruzpatane) October 11, 2024

Storage

Beyond the delivery capacity, the Cybervan also has storage at the rear and front – both fascia plates slide upwards to expose additional storage room – essentially a bus-sized frunk and trunk.

The frunk, oddly enough, looks like it has far more capacity than the trunk in this case – with about 10 suitcases in the open frunk, while the open trunk only looks like it has capacity for 2 suitcases.

The frunk storage. Very spacious!

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The trunk storage. It seems oddly small.

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Release Date

There’s no date or pricing for the Robovan just yet. While it hails back to the 1950’s, it may be further out in the future than Tesla made it seem. Tesla didn’t share a price point or time frame for when the van would become available.

Oh, and Elon mentioned that it's called the ruh-BO-vahn. Like Suburban, but Robovan. We’d love to see what everyone thinks about its name. Let us know how you think it's pronounced.

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Tesla Hosts Public All-Hands Meeting for Q1 2025 - Recap & Replay

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Tesla regularly holds quarterly all-hands meetings for employees, but last night marks the first time Tesla has live-streamed the event for the public.

The meeting primarily focused on Tesla’s employees, recent achievements, and the future of Tesla. While it didn’t reveal much new information, it was interesting to see Elon Musk candidly engaging with his teams, who seem to genuinely enjoy working with him. Still, there were a few noteworthy takeaways.

As with Tesla’s Earnings Calls and other live events, we’ve put together a concise, easy-to-digest recap of everything discussed.

General Points

• Work-related Injuries declined over time

• Planning to expand to new markets

• Cell Manufacturing

  • Continuing to invest in battery supply

  • Cheapest, lowest cost per kWh cell

• The supercharger network continues to grow

  • Vehicle range and charging speed should match the needs of humans and their required time for breaks

  • V4 Cabinets, 500 kW for Cybertruck, 1.2MW for Semi

• Tesla is building sustainable abundance

  • Autonomy is key for this to happen

  • Optimus and AI compute

  • This appears to be part of Elon’s new mission for Tesla, but it isn’t in the company’s updated mission statement just yet.

• Service and Collision Expansion will continue, with a big focus on Service

  • Service is what will sell future vehicles

• Interesting opportunity to make an electric, supersonic jet

  • Elon is stretched too thin but believes Tesla has all the tech in-house to do it

• Tesla is in Master Plan Phase III - making all energy on Earth sustainable / abundance for all

Tesla’s Achievements

• Sold 7 million vehicles globally

  • From just 20 in their first year of production

  • 10 million by next year

  • 3 million vehicles a year

• Giga Berlin has produced 660,000 drive units

• Giga Shanghai has built 3m cars

• Giga New York has produced 160,000 NACS adapters

• GIga Nevada has built 11,000 battery packs in a year

• Semi Factory on track for completion

  • Over a million, millions possibly

  • Will be autonomous in the future

• Stationary Battery Storage is a gigantic plus

  • Shanghai Megafactory is up and running

  • More Megapacks and Powerwalls are being produced than ever

• Switchover to New Model Y in a short period was an amazing feat of supply chain engineering

Optimus

• Optimus Production Line in Fremont is up and running

  • The first Optimus came off the production line this year

  • Pilot production this year

  • 22 DoF hand and forearm are now in production

• Real brain behind Optimus, not on the cloud and not pre-programmed

• What’s learned from cars (batteries, electronics, design, manufacturing, FSD) transferred to Optimus

• Biggest product of all time

  • 5,000 units by the end of the year, 10,000 at max

  • 50,000 next year

  • Middle of next year for outside of controlled environments

  • Will be available late 2026 for employees - who will get first dibs on access to Optimus

• Tesla will expand Optimus production to Giga Texas as well

Cybercab and FSD

• The Cybercab line will be fully autonomous

  • The aim is 5 seconds between producing cars

  • 50,000-ton gigacasting machine - make five castings at a time

    • Currently 9,000-ton machines

    • Seems to be an interesting engineering challenge

• Progress towards FSD (Unsupervised)

  • Cars doing useful work with no one in them (end-of-line to outbound lot)

  • Just started at Giga Texas

  • FSD will be 10x safer than humans

• Autopilot Hardware 4 / AI 4

  • Nothing better on the market than AI4 right now

  • No point in waiting for AI5 or AI6 as Tesla will continue producing new versions. There will be an AI 7, 8, etc.

• Autonomous Teslas will be everywhere

  • In 5 years, regulatory approval globally

  • Even without Cybercab, there is a gigantic fleet that can be autonomous

Cortex and Dojo

• Cortex - AI Training

  • One of the most powerful

  • 50,000 active GPUs

  • 100,000 GPUs coming soon

• Dojo now active in Giga New York and Palo Alto

  • Now actively working, doing about 5%-10% of the training load

Watch

Q1 2025 | Tesla All-Hands Livestream https://t.co/BqvjcLQo9H

— Tesla (@Tesla) March 21, 2025

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Tesla Debuts Super Manifold V2 in the New Model Y—But Not Every Car Has It Yet

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The Super Manifold is Tesla’s solution to reducing the complexity of a heat pump system for an EV. Tesla showed off its engineering chops back with the original Model Y in 2019, where it introduced a new 8-way valve (the Octovalve) and a new heat pump alongside the uniquely designed Super Manifold to improve efficiency.

Now, Tesla is launching an improved version with the refreshed Model Y - the Super Manifold V2. We got to hear about it thanks to Sandy Munro’s interview with Tesla’s Lars Moravy (Vice President of Vehicle Engineering) and Franz Von Holzhausen (Chief of Vehicle Design). You can watch the video further below.

What Is The Super Manifold?

The Super Manifold (get it, Superman?), is an all-in-one package that brings in all the components of a heat pump system into one component. The Super Manifold packs all the refrigerant and coolant components around a 2-layer PCB (printed circuit board).

This Super Manifold would normally have 15 or 20 separate components, but Tesla managed to integrate them all into one nice package. That presented Tesla with a new challenge: how to integrate a heat pump—capable of both heating and cooling—into a single, efficient platform?

Several years ago, Tesla designed the Octovalve. It combines inlets and outlets and can variably change between heating or cooling on the fly - without needing to be plumbed in different directions. This is especially important for EVs, which may need to heat the battery with the waste heat generated from the motors or the heat pump while also cooling the cabin - or vice versa.

Original Super Manifold V1.1

Tesla launched the Super Manifold V1.1 back in 2022, and it provided some minor improvements to the waste heat processing of the heat exchange system. It also tightened up the Octovalve, preventing the leakage of oils into the HVAC loop that could cause it to freeze at extremely low temperatures.

Tesla has been using the V1.1 for several years now, and it has really solved the vast majority of issues with the heat pump system that many older Model Ys experienced.

Super Manifold V2 Coming Soon

Now, Tesla is introducing the Super Manifold V2 in the new Model Y. It will improve the overall cooling capacity provided by the original Super Manifold, but unfortunately, not every single new Model Y will come with it equipped. Tesla will be introducing it slowly across the lineup and at different rates at different factories, depending on part availability.

Eventually, the Super Manifold V2 will also make its way to other vehicles, potentially including the upcoming refresh for the Model S and Model X, but initially, it’ll be exclusive to the new Model Y. Tesla expects to have the new manifold in every new Model Y later this year.

If you’re interested in checking out the whole video, we’ve got it for you below.

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