Elon Musk Invented A Worse City Bus

Silicon Valley has invented the bus again. During last night’s Tesla “We, Robot” event company CEO Elon Musk showed off the new “Robovan” which he pronounced as “rub oven” for some reason. It looks like something straight out of an art deco nightmare, and it’s here to make public transit in your city even worse. The 20-passenger electric autonomous vehicle was Elon’s “one more thing” to close out the night. It sure is something.

Walter Isaacson On Elon Musk(s)

Disregard, for a moment, that this vehicle will just straight up never be produced at scale. The Robovan is aesthetically interesting, at least. It’s clear that this thing took visual inspiration from Roaring Twenties Jay Gatsby type shit with its brightwork and hideaway mechanicals. There isn’t so much as a wheel in sight, giving the vehicle the appearance of floating across the ground.

Thankfully there are no potholes or road imperfections in American city streets, because this thing has zero practical ride height. It’s difficult to tell exactly where Robovan’s wheels are, but depending on the size of the overhangs, this could have a real problem getting up steep hills, speed bumps or into parking lots. Surely certified brain genius Elon Musk has a solution for this self-inflicted problem, however. Just wait, he’ll tell you.

Image: Tesla

Elon Musk is notoriously opposed to public transit, even going so far as admitting that his whole “Hyperloop” project was just a way to divert public money away from high-speed rail projects. It’s quite clear that by making electric city buses look flashy and dystopian retro-futuristic chic, he hopes to pull money away from public transit investment in cities all over the world. The worse he can make public transit [look no farther than the Las Vegas Tesla tunnels for his genius vision] the more appealing Tesla’s road cars become.

There are a few things about this bus layout that make absolutely zero sense.

First, the Robovan has its 20 seats laid out in a ten-facing-ten orientation. The seats are tightly packed in to a relatively small footprint. The center seats look like they’d put you knee-to-knee with a bunch of strangers, without leaving a good way for passengers to disembark.

Second, there’s no room for your personal items inside the cab of the Robovan, so they designed a place at the nose of the vehicle to store luggage and carry-ons. That doesn’t seem like a reasonable way to get your groceries home or whatever. Does the hatch open up at every stop? Is there anything stopping someone getting off a stop before you from just taking your shit? Is there anything stopping a random opportunist passerby from just taking your shit? Seems half-baked to me.

Image: Tesla

Don’t make me tap the sign. You know, the sign that says “If a 20-person driverless vehicle goes on a prescribed route to pick up and drop off passengers, it’s just an expensive and complicated way to put bus drivers out of work.”

Image: Tesla

This thing is a flashy distraction, which is what it was always meant to be. Elon is so focused on pumping the company’s share price (which didn’t seem to work this time) that he’ll announce two brand new self-driving vehicles before figuring out how to deliver the hundreds of Semis or Roadsters customers have already put money down on. Anyway, don’t hold your breath waiting on a new autonomous bus from Tesla to launch, the company has proven time and again that it can’t stick to the timetables it sets for itself.