Tesla Trademark Hints At Robovan Sharing Program

The company locked in "Robus," but that doesn't mean we'll see driverless Tesla Robovans roaming the streets anytime soon.

Photo by: InsideEVs

By: Iulian Dnistran

Feb 12, 2025 at 8:29am ET

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Tesla applied for two "Robus" trademarks with the USPTO.
One refers to electric buses, while the other is for ridesharing services.
The Robovan made a surprise appearance during last year's Robotaxi event.

Tesla has submitted two trademark applications in the United States that might have something to do with its autonomous ridesharing plans. As first seen by CarMoses, the American EV maker is trying to trademark the “Robus” name in two different categories.

The first application submitted to the United States Patent and Trademark Office refers to electric vehicles, buses and electrically powered buses, while the second application caters to passenger transportation, time-based ridesharing services, peer-to-peer vehicle sharing and temporary use of vehicles.

We aren't certain that Robus will be the official name of Tesla’s Robotaxi and Robovan business, but these two trademark applications certainly support that theory.

For years, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has pledged self-driving cars will be coming “soon.” Those promises culminated in last year’s Robotaxi event that showed two futuristic vehicles without steering wheels but offered few answers to technical questions and logistical issues.

Currently, Tesla’s so-called Full Self-Driving (Supervised) advanced driving assistance suite (ADAS) relies on cameras to “see” the world, just like a human driver. That reduces costs considerably and makes changing components easy if something goes wrong, but other problems arise. For example, if the cameras get dirty, the system can't function so it shuts down—and there’s no automated cleaning setup in the works.

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Gallery: Tesla Robovan

Source: Tesla

By contrast, Alphabet-owned Waymo, which already offers paid rides in multiple U.S. cities, uses a multitude of sensors, including LiDar. That’s both for redundancy and for making sure the system keeps working if it’s raining or snowing or if there’s fog on the road. Considering there’s no one behind the wheel, it’s a welcome safety net.

Before we see driverless Teslas roaming across the land, the company will start a low-volume trial in Austin, Texas in June. "Teslas will be in the wild with no one in them, in June in Austin," Elon Musk said during Tesla’s fourth-quarter 2024 earnings call. "This is not some far-off mythical situation, it's five, six months away."

As with all patents and trademarks, there's always the possibility that this may never see the light of day. Only time will tell.