Musk just showed his shiny new Robovan. There's already a Chinese vehicle with the same name.

Tesla unveiled the Cybercab and RoboVan on Robotaxi Day. They were flashy and aesthetic. But they would be useless if they don't function as intended. They are not new concepts.

Waymo, Cruise, Apollo Go, WeRide and a few others have robotaxis for a few years already.

Tesla's new Robovan has a Chinese counterpart with the same name. WeRide unveiled its Robovan back in 2021.

A separate robotics startup, Starship Technologies, filed a US trademark application for "Robovan" in 2017.

WeRide, a Chinese autonomous driving startup, unveiled its own self-driving cargo van in 2021. WeRide named its product the Robovan, and the company's CEO, Tony Han, touted it as being at the intersection of a passenger and logistics vehicle.

"It's an autonomous driving vehicle. If you put a seat there it can serve as a robotaxi car. If you put a cabinet there it is really a logistics car," Han told CNBC in 2021.

"Why don't we do both?" Han added.

WeRide said it is partnering with JMC-Ford Motors, a joint venture between state-owned automaker Jiangling Motors Corp and Ford, to manufacture the Robovan.

In May, WeRide said it obtained a license to conduct road tests for the vehicle in Guangzhou, China. On its website, WeRide said it had received "over 10,000 indication orders from a leading express delivery company" for the car.

The WeRide Robovan or Robobus is the pinnacle of WeRide's technological innovation. It's the world's first L4 autonomous minibus designed for open urban roads and the first to achieve large-scale commercial application as well.

Built on WeRide's advanced autonomous driving hardware and software architecture, the vehicle features in multiple capabilities such as 360-degree perception without blind spots, has a 200-metre range of obstacle detection, a top speed of 40km/h and combining safety with comfort, etc. It fulfills the criteria for zero emissions, low noise, and high-frequency commercial operations.

Currently, WeRide Robobus has conducted road testing and operations in nearly 30 cities, including Guangzhou, Beijing, Wuxi, Nanjing, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi. On Dec 30, 2023, it officially launched the first commercial autonomous driving minibus service in Guangzhou, China, the first BRT line, and the first nighttime autonomous driving minibus service.

WeRide has also launched its Robobus shuttle service at Resorts World Sentosa in Singapore.

But WeRide wasn't the first company interested in the name "Robovan."

In Jul 2017, a company called Starship Technologies filed a trademark for "Robovan," per the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Unlike Tesla and WeRide, Starship Technologies' offering isn't a self-driving vehicle.

Starship Technologies said in a 2016 YouTube video that their Robovan is a van specially designed to accommodate their autonomous delivery robots.

"Instead of completing door-to-door delivery, the vans will drive to pre-agreed locations to load and unload goods and then dispatch the robots in the final step for on-demand delivery. Upon making the customer delivery, the robots will autonomously find their way back to the van for re-loading," the video's caption read.