LA residents perplexed by sightings of strange vans but there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation

Residents were completely perplexed by sightings of strange vans out and about on the streets of LA, but, luckily, the weird little vans actually have a perfectly reasonable explanation.

The camouflaged cars don’t look like any that anyone has ever seen before. And spotters were left scratching their heads, trying to come up with an explanation.

Usually with camouflaged vehicles, good car spotters can identify what’s hiding beneath the squares of black, white, and grey. But the flat-nosed van came with US-spec side markers but an unrecognizable badge.

Turns out, the back window emblazoned with ‘automated vehicle, may stop suddenly’ gives us all the information we need about who the new kid on the block is in LA.

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Just when you think you can easily recognize all of the cars on the road, a new challenger enters the arena, in the form of a black, gray, and white colored small-ish truck.

Residents in LA have been left baffled seeing these new, strange trucks driving around on the streets. And importantly, they don’t have any drivers.

To understand the importance of these little vans, we need to know about Waymo.

As you may already know, Waymo is the self-driving robotaxi company currently operating across four cities in the US: Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin.

But in the very near future, a fifth city will join this exclusive club. Because Waymo recently announced that its next stop will be Miami.

Waymos have been a subject of much interest in the news, and even world-renowned car enthusiast James May had a go at riding in one.

Of course, Waymo isn’t the only company running autonomous vehicles. Tesla has also joined in, promising to have driverless taxis in American cities very soon.

The cars in LA, however, look to be new Waymo robovans. They’re bigger than a standard Waymo taxi and were created by the famous Chinese automaker Geely.

These ‘Zeekr robovans’ were impossible to identify because they’re not on sale in the US.

It seems that Geely has made a deal with Waymo and is making Zeekrs with the specific goal of creating bespoke autonomous robovans.

Waymo seems to have moved on from Jaguar I-Pace EVs and Chrysler Pacificas. And the future it’s Zeeking is definitely Geely.

It’s exciting to see these strange vans out and about on the street. But Geely also has big plans for its new flying robotaxis to be as everyday as autonomous cars.

Mystery van, reveal yourself!