Elon Musk unveils surprising 'Robovan' at eye-catching Tesla event, saying humanoid Optimus robots will cost less than a car

Elon Musk unveiled three new high-tech products from Tesla on Thursday evening at a highly anticipated event in California – including, surprisingly, an autonomous people transporter.

Musk rode onto the stage in the long-awaited driverless “Cybercab” that Tesla was scheduled to present at Warner Bros. Studio that evening, titled “We, Robot.”

But a never-before-seen 20-person robovan and the latest generation of Tesla's humanoid robots also made their debut during the unveiling, which was watched at times via live stream by more than 3.6 million viewers.

Tesla used 20 two-door, fully autonomous “cybercabs” to drive attendees around the studio, while dozens of its humanoid Optimus robots served drinks and played rock-paper-scissors with guests.

“The autonomous future is here,” said Musk. “We have 50 fully autonomous cars here tonight. You see the Model Ys and the Cybercab. Everything driverless.”

It is noteworthy that the two-door “Cybercab” does not have a steering wheel, pedals or charging port. The electric vehicle has inductive charging options and wing doors.

“There's no steering wheel or pedals, so I hope it goes well,” Musk joked on stage.

Tesla's CEO said the self-driving taxis would hit the market “before 2027” and would be available for less than $30,000 each and operating costs of 20 cents per mile.

“We expect to go into production with the 'Cybercab'…probably – well, I tend to be a bit optimistic about the time frames – but in 2026. Before 2027, let me put it that way” said Musk, citing his numerous concerns about broken promises from previous 2020 rollouts.

His idea for the cybercabs is to make them available through Tesla's own app, where taxi owners could rent out an entire fleet of driverless electric vehicles.

But the prototypes unveiled on Thursday are not yet ready to drive as they still need to be supervised by a real human – similar to the autonomous driving modes available on current Teslas on the market.

“We will move from attended, fully autonomous driving to unattended, fully autonomous driving, where … you can fall asleep and wake up at your destination,” Musk said of the company’s hopes.

Tesla's autonomous driving technology differs from that of its competitors, which are already deploying driverless robotaxis in select cities. The technology is more cost-effective in the long run, but experts say it is riskier and will take longer to be ready for use.

Tesla's strategy relies solely on a combination of cameras and artificial intelligence to make driving decisions, while competitors such as Waymo, Amazon's Zoox, General Motors' Cruise and a number of Chinese companies have a similar strategy as well as additional technologies such as radar, lidar and complex Use cards.

The Robovans would run on the same technology.

Musk also launched the latest generation of Tesla's Optimus robots, seeking to change Tesla's image away from a pure automaker to that of an AI robotics company.

He said he expects the faceless robot helpers to cost less than a car, at $20,000 to $30,000, so everyone could own one.

“So what can it do? It will be able to do anything you want,” Musk told the crowd. “So it could be a teacher or it could be taking care of your children. It can walk your dog, mow your lawn, get groceries, just be your friend, serve drinks – whatever you can think of, it will do it all.”

“I think this will be the biggest product ever.”