Elon Musk introduces Robovan, Chinese company has vehicle of the same name

• Tesla's new Robovan has a Chinese counterpart of the same name.
• WeRide presented its Robovan in 2021.
• A separate robotics startup, Starship Technologies, filed a U.S. trademark application for “Robovan” in 2017.

Tesla's new Robovan was CEO Elon Musk's novel surprise at the company's “We, Robot” event.

But there was something about it that wasn't so new – his name.

WeRide, a Chinese autonomous driving startup, introduced its own self-driving van in 2021. WeRide called its product Robovan, and the company's CEO Tony Han described it as an interface between a passenger vehicle and a logistics vehicle.

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

“Why don't we do both?” Han added.

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

In May, WeRide announced that it had received 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.

But WeRide was not the first company to be interested in the name “Robovan”.

In July 2017, a company called Starship Technologies filed a trademark for “Robovan” with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Starship, which specializes in autonomous delivery robots, was founded by Skype co-founders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis.

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The company announced in 2016 that it would work with Mercedes-Benz to develop a “Robovan” for delivering goods to neighborhoods.

Unlike Tesla and WeRide, Starship Technologies' offering is not a self-driving vehicle.

Starship Technologies said in a 2016 YouTube video that their Robovan was a transporter designed specifically to house their autonomous delivery robots.

“Instead of carrying out door-to-door delivery, the delivery trucks travel to pre-arranged locations to load and unload goods and then send the robots to deliver on-demand as a final step. When delivering to the customer, the robots do this autonomously.” “We find our way back to the van to reload it,” says the caption of the video.

Musk, meanwhile, touts the Tesla Robovan as a vehicle that “can carry up to 20 people and also transport goods.”

“What happens when you need a vehicle that’s bigger than a Model Y?” That’s what Musk said on Thursday evening before a Robovan prototype rolled up in front of the stage. Thursday's event was largely billed as a debut for Tesla's Robotaxi, or Cybercab.

Representatives from Tesla, WeRide and Starship Technologies did not immediately respond to Business Insider's requests for comment sent outside regular business hours.