What is the robotaxi vision that’s worth trillions?

Elon's taxi will have built-in hotboxing and a blowjob machine

Also fart noises

You can make funny memes with Grok Imagine while chatting to your robotaxi supervisor in the passenger seat.

When they (mostly Elon) say “trillions” they’re talking about market cap, not revenue or profits, because thats their focus. The total revenue for rideshare (including taxis) is around $300B per year. Total profit is ~$20B. A non-insane P/E for a company in this business is maybe 20-30x, so if a single company took 100% of the market, they’d be a ~$500B company. To get to “trillions”, Tesla would have to grow the TAM by 4-5x, and own 100% market share. There is no real-world scenario where this is possible. The TAM will likely grow, but only if ride costs are significantly cheaper. We have not seen this at any scale yet, and Elon’s promises ring hollow. And it will not grow to 4-5x, at least not in the next few decades. Robotaxi is not a viable solution for most drivers and most situations. And then there’s the competition. Even if and when the market grows that big, there will be dozens of competitors fighting for market share.

> the value proposition is to create a self-driving “Mobility on Demand” service which is good enough that a decent fraction of people decide they can partially or fully give up some or all car ownership. IMHO, this is fairly simple math. The federal mileage rate is $0.70/mile. This is not a guess - its a number that is surely scrutinized and contested every year, and it is a well researched and justifiable number. Soooo...will RoboRides ever cost $0.70/mile? Nope. Its still a car that costs something, that needs tires, insurance, fuel, etc. Maybe there's some economy of scale...but its a business that has additional overhead to manage the fleet. So cost is certainly not going to entice people to dump their cars. But IMHO, even if robo-rides got down to $0.35, people still wouldn't dump their cars. Cars are personal storage containers - strollers, little league gear, that pack of gum in the console, baby seats...the list is endless. Just walk through a parking lot and creepily check out the cars - most of them will have "stuff" in them that people like to haul around with them. We're not going to give that up - we've proven that already by rarely taking public transit. This is all a mirage. IMHO, Google's foray into this was not originally based on Robo-Fares. Its was a simple calculus that if people's personally owned cars drove themselves, that equals 1 more hour in the day when they can be doom scrolling on their platform. That's how they monetize it. But the idea that TSLA will reap robo-riches on a taxi service is insane.

This assumes that Tesla's camera-based system is somehow going to push us towards an iRobot style future where all vehicles are automated. Maybe you could get close for over the road assets, but cameras stop being useful off-roads or unbeaten paths. The only way I see this actually being scalable would be if it could be deployed in semi-trucks for commercial use but we're a long way away from anyone thinking that's safe... other than maybe Musk himself and his fanboys who are delusional

It's going to replace public transit. Who's going to take a bus when everybody's daily commuter is out on the road picking up fares to earn its owner a little extra money?

Can't wait for the front of the grocery store to look like curbside pickup at the airport!

A huge majority of US population centers are designed and legislated to require having a car. It is all speculation that self driving cars are worth that much , but they all cost a huge amount and nobody ever talks about the wear and tear and cost of maintenance. Being a capitalist society , do you trust them to 100% upkeep these vehicles? Or do you think they will cut corners and just maintain them "enough" to get by? Do you really want to see out of control cars on the streets? I doubt the market cap is anything but ballooned on speculation , while there is a market its anyone's guess what the real number is.

This

Feels worth noting that public transportation isn’t a feasible option for the vast majority of folks in the US. The infrastructure is piss poor at best. If people had the option to utilize reliable & accessible public transportation options, I imagine more would.

Which is stupid, for a lot of reasons: - busses will still be more economical - it will not be your car which will earn you a little extra income while you work, it will be a big corporation operating a big fleet. Joe Shmoe will not be able to compete with them, best he can hope for is to become a subcontractor who carries all the risk. - and most of all, robotaxis make sense as an extension of public transport infrastructure instead of a replacement.

I think most people that currently have cars won't choose to ditch them, but eventually it won't really be a choice. Looks at how much software has gone from a one-time purchase to a subscription model. Younger people who've never owned a car may chose to rely on a ride-share service, especially if they live in urban/dense suburban areas. Older people who can no longer safely drive may give up their cars. Will it ever equal that $1 trillion? Maybe, eventually.

Cars sit idle over 95% of the time. Sure. But not at the "rush hours". You'd need the same number of robotaxis as there are regular cars currently. There'll still be traffic congestion. Elon's master plan forgot to include reality.

Most cities have public transit: bus systems. Buses are relatively inexpensive, routes can be incredibly flexible, and could easily be scaled...in the unlikely event people actually used buses. But people don't use them. The vast majority of us will not regularly use public transit, outside very dense cities where it is cost prohibitive to store a car. These robo-rides could cost 30 cents a mile, and people still wouldn't use them. How do I know? One glance at my city's bus routes, and I can go 7 miles for 2 bucks...and nobody rides the bus. Its also worth noting that many cities had well developed trolley systems in the first half of the 20th century. They were amazing, really - reaching far out into the suburbs...and almost all of them have gone away. The reason? Even though we had "reliable & accessible public transportation", people overwhelmingly choose to drive their own cars. In the context of whether or not robotaxis will serve as some sort of public transit in the future...worth $trillions...I have to ask: "where's the beef".

I wonder about capacity. Everyone wants one to get to work for 9, and home at 5. The demand isn't spread around evenly. Lots of robotaxis will sit idle just like regular cars during non-peak times

If all vehicles have this, and many manufacturers are trying, the competition is killing and nobody's gonna make money. Certainly not when it's generally available.

The competitors are going to license from waymo, make the systems a lot cheaper, and nobody is going to want to ride in a Tesla due to Musk's baggage. If anyone takes over, it's probably going to be Toyota.

Big airports have uber parking lots now. Fun to watch the race to the terminal when a plane comes in.

If we have robotaxis at reasonable price. I can get rid of my car and parking fees in big cities. Or keep my car and have it make some money while I can do other stuff. That’s the promise from 7 years ago when I bought my car…

But which black Toyota Camry is mine?!?

Joe Shmoe will be a subcontractor who carries all the risk and who pays Elon an insane amount in subscription fees for FSD. People who buy a Tesla thinking that it's going to generate "passive income" for them are idiots.

The other thing that doesn't seem to get mentioned is that for an enormous proportion of the population, their vehicle is an extension of their identity. If people actually viewed cars as nothing more than a transportation tool you wouldn't see anything other than Corollas and mini vans on the streets.

What I'm most excited about with automated robotaxis (or whatever they are called), is having a variety of vehicles available. At the moment everyone buys a fuck off SUV for the few occasions they need to go a long distance with the kids, then spends 90% of the time driving it solo to work which takes up a massive amount of space on the roads.  Personal one person mini vehicles have never taken off because they are still cost £5k+ which is a massive expense when you can just take the SUV. But with ride hailing you could get an appropriate vehicle for your needs.  One person gets and automated mini vehicle, 8 people get the people carrier etc.  I'm disappointed that most of the ride hailing companies seem to be building out mini vans rather than going small, but hopefully once the tech is more established we'll see more variety in vehicles. Second thing is it will be a game changer having less parked cars on the road.   So much road space is taken up with parked cars, and they park all over the pavements as well.  It will really open up the pavements better to have less cars parked everywhere.

Excellent point - how is one supposed to reveal their looming midlife crisis without driving a massively inappropriate sports car/oversized truck? A combover and youthful “fashion” is not always sufficient…

Okay, so just for once, let's try imagining a perfect scenario where this made up technology actually starts working without need for remote overrides, the car 'owner' is given a decent cut of the money earned as it taxis people around, and let's say even that the absolutely whimsical bullshit of the car charging itself is not only taken care of, but you don't need to pay the charging costs because daddy Elon got you covered, and the recharging fees are only deducted from your profit and so it's neither an extra bit of time inconvenience to recharge 'your' car, nor and extra cost you pay for other people using it. In fact, even let's ignore the fact that most of the time you will be leaving it sit, is the time you're at work, which is the same time most other people are also not traveling around, so it's the worst time to try and run a taxi. Let's ignore all that, and assume an absolute beautiful wonderful scenario where everything works out logistically. I ask you this: Is it really your car, if you can't leave your personal belongings, your wallet, your family photos, or really anything precious in it that you would be uncomfortable with someone nicking, as any of your passengers might take shit since 'no one's looking' that you'll then need to presumably comb through security footage for (let's assume the car has that as a minimal level of avoidance), start a headache of a process to get your shit back (which in the case of personal photos, IDs, credit cards etc might already have been copied)? Hell, you forget a credit card in the glove box one time, one passanger can take it out, write down the numbers, not use it for a week or two, and you'll have almost no chance of ever figuring out who bought 700 dollars worth of dakimakuras with your card. Or let's say there's a crew of burglars. They just have to have one guy ride Tesla robotaxis, hide an air tag somewhere in your car where you wouldn't check, and bob's your uncle. Not only do they now know where you live since they can check your car's position, but they even know when you're away from home, maybe taking a vacation. They can do this to dozens of people who own fancy robot cars, and have their pickings of jackasses both rich enough to have nice things, and dumb enough to not protect their property. I mean sure, maybe you'll go ahead and scan your car for RFIDs every time you get back in there, and won't having to do that just make you feel great about 'your' car, that you need to do a security sweep of just to make sure hasn't been turned into a cyber snitch against you? Please for the love of god, start using your brain.

There is no supporting value proposition with TSLA at all.

Imagine being crazy enough to write that many paragraphs about scenarios you just made up to upset yourself. Please for the love of God get help.

Yeah the population overall isn’t dense enough to warrant robust public transportation. I could technically take a bus to the office. But that’s about a two hour commute, versus a half hour in my car. And I have an express bus station in walking distance from my house. And I live in one of the mostly densely populated states in the US.

I saw on the news that foxcon will be making electricity storage units at the old lordstown Chevy plant. This will be a major competition for tesla's megapack they make and where banking on.

It’s your lack of foresight that’ll do you in brother.

Not nearly as quickly as having to take public transportation here in L.A. brother, it's a dystopia shitshow.

I agree about LA public transport, but i can’t see how robotaxi would ever make sense as a replacement

Work from home and robotaxis have enormous potential for letting people live and work where they want to.

I have so many scenarios in my head where this would be such a failure. But then I remembered the last guy who listed some fail cases, you told them to go get help. So I guess there’s nothing else for me to say. Good luck with your vision of the future brooothur

Lol.

I don’t know that $.70 per mile is a huge barrier. Uber makes money and is able to find drivers. I think the bigger issue is time. Musk talks about robo taxis working 18 hrs a day but demand isn’t uniformly distributed. There are a ton of cars needed 7-9am and 4-6pm m-f. The rest of the time there isn’t. Uber solves this by having supply scale by some drivers not driving at certain times because it’s not profitable. Tesla would need to idle enough cars to satisfy rush hour demand for 80% of the day. That’s a ton of capital investment not working most of the time. I think automated taxis can eat a lot of the taxi business whether that’s Waymo, Amazon or tesla. They can’t reasonably cut into the personal cars market because most of the fleet is idle most of the time.

>Uber makes money What would happen if Uber owned all its cars, paid for all its fuel, etc?

Presumably the same. Drivers wouldn’t do uber if they lost money. Maybe things get confusing with insurance as some of that is “paid” by personal use of car but insurance generally scales with miles in some fashion and a company should be able to negotiate a better rate than Joe from Albuquerque. This doesn’t seem controversial taxi companies exist and have for a long time in a profitable fashion. The big issue is the ability to scale supply by getting uber drivers to not drive at unprofitable times. Which is the point if the second half of my comment.

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There’s a lot to unpack here… “Taxi companies exist and have for a long time in a profitable fashion” You do realize that those taxis are typically owned or leased by the driver and that they typically pay for their own fuel & insurance, right? “The big issue is the ability to scale supply by getting uber drivers to not drive at unprofitable times.” And how do you think this happens? What mechanism could it possibly be?

$0.70/mile is a simplified rate for accounting for vehicle costs for business driving inclusive of fuel, maintenance, insurance, and vehicle acquisition/depreciation. It has nothing to do with the value of self-driving. If I drive 100 miles for business work, my company can hand me $70 reimbursement. I could also submit actuals (e.g., fuel, tire wear, and depreciation accrued). If I drive a Range Rover that 100 miles, I'll probably want to use actuals if I can. You can absolutely get a car to drive that will cost you less than $0.70/mile all in not counting your driving labor. Just get a Toyota Corolla Hybrid or even a Model 3 (if you're cool w/ the Nazi stuff). But that doesn't matter. I pay $50-80 for a few mile Uber rides several times/week and I charge it to my company which bills my clients who then write off the travel expenses from their taxable income. If Waymo or anyone else charges me $10/mile b/c that's what it cost that day, it's still a reimbursable business expense. Waymo on the other side would write off their vehicle expenses even if its $100/mile today. If they can get the driving part to $0.30/mile on top of a vehicle run cost that's $0.50/mile and covers 200k miles paid (not deadhead) and they're able to sell the combined service for $1.50/mile, that's still $0.70/mile in net margin. From a personal use standpoint, a person's willingness to pay for a car ride would rarely be under $0.70/mile because cars cost money even if you don't drive them. A train ride home from the airport is $2.50 for 11 miles for me but the same fare can cover up to 24 miles up from that one line. Train ought to be packed to the gills. Truth is, people pay a premium to not be on a train.

Pipe dream not vision

Or, we could just fund better public transit through sources like taxing musk fairly

As someone that lives in smallish sized city, I quite like thr convenience of having my own car in my driveway, that I can use whenever I want, without having to use an app or worry about surge pricing. And there’s a lot of others like me. The TAM of robotaxi type services is massively overestimated

I mean, it was largely heavy lobbying and conspiring by the auto industry that killed streetcars. And more people use public transit while well funded, congestion pricing can be a step in the right direction too.

No one would work as a driver for a taxi company if they couldn't pass on the costs.

Obviously, but have you ever ridden in a cab? (Or in an Uber once the venture capital money dried up?) They’re typically operated by people who are utterly Unemployable in any other profession *because* the profit margins are virtually nonexistent. It’s usually 2-3 cousins who just arrived in the country last week, and who are driving 12-16 hours a day after they get off from their dishwashing or construction demo jobs. And my point is simply that those guys are always going to be cheaper than a robot.

I worked for an automotive OEM. We discussed the value of self-driving. The use cases that popped up that people would pay through the nose for were: - Sell a senior citizen their dignity and independence after they lose sight, reaction times, etc and the family would otherwise need to have the car keys discussion. IYKY. When the time came for my grandmother, she felt it was a horrible humiliation to have to ask someone to drive her somewhere. Uber/Lyft partially solve this, but the driver reminds them of their frailty and loss of capability. My estimate was that wealthy seniors would easy take on the equivalent of another car payment to keep that independence for a few more years. - Sell the helicopter mom their time back by having the car take the children safely to a destination and pick them up. There are a lot of mothers that breathe a sigh of relief when their kids are able to take themselves to activities and classes. Again easily worth at least a used car payment because most parents already pay that for their 16 year old. - For the dual income family with children, a self driving car could drop kids off at day care and pick them up saving hours in traffic and reducing stress from closing out and end of day emergency and getting to daycare before they start charging outrageous late fees. These tend to be high earning couples, so the value could be huge. You get to sell more cars and sell self driving package. - Sell the commuter and super commuter in congested metropolitan areas lower stress and more time. Between work and home they would have a low stress ride without others (like on a bus or train) where they could nap, read, doom scroll, or watch a movie. - Sell lower insurance to parents by giving teenagers safe personal mobility without the risk of injury in a crash or outrageous insurance payments. Worth at least as much as under 25 insurance premiums and a used car payment. - Sell time back for errands and shopping. Get the convenience of “delivery” when you want by dispatching a car to curbside pickup for dinner, groceries, and household supplies. For some people maybe worth their DoorDash and other subscriptions. Potentially get subsidies/payment from select vendors if there are locks on the service. “Super Drive sponsored by Taco Bell!” All of that says a real self driving car could potentially double vehicle OEM revenue while only incrementally increasing the cost of sales. For early entrants into those markets, the profits could be astronomical until competition picked up and reduced margins. Tesla and others are still a long way from that with a lot of legal, insurance and regulatory risk to address. Robotaxis are a tepid first step in that direction. A key problem is going to be fleet utilization. People tend to use vehicles at the same times. So a big fleet that can meet a big chunk of demand will suffer from under utilization and crush margins as the business scales.

We seem to be talking past each other. The company is making a profit and the drivers are making a profit. Whether the drivers are Harvard grads or someone unemployable in other fields they’re not doing some internship for exposure. If the cost was higher than the payouts they’d stop. As for scaling supply uber does this by changing rates which drives drivers away if they get too low. Obviously that doesn’t work for av which is why as I said they can’t eliminate private vehicle ownership. However a base load of taxis is viable just like based load electricity is viable. Av taxi would operate like fossil fuel power plants providing the base load and human drivers similar to uber would help in cases where increased supply is needed (sports games, rush hour). Teslas original idea of renting out people’s personal cars makes more sense for this reason vs their current solution of the robotaxi owned and operated by tesla. If someone is on vacation or isn’t going to the sports game they can rent out their car for those higher demand times. It’s unclear what percentage of people want their personal car used in this fashion so tesla would have to do some research on that. Maybe they offer a cleaning service for the car or maybe tesla has enough wacko musk lovers that people will let their car get trashed for the mission.

Why are they cheaper? That seems like a large claim.

“If the cost was higher than the payouts, they’d stop” You would think that, but as a former Uber driver, you’d be surprised. I was driving a 7 year old Prius, and barely squeezing out a razor thin profit, while I watched other drivers using their brand new SUV making the same fares with 5x the expenses and I can guarantee you those people were not making more money than they were spending, but they were upside down on a car payment, between regular jobs or simply needed daily income, regardless of the realities of their financial choices, they had to make rent or that car note that month. And it only matters what they do because that’s the competition. How do you compete with free? Free vehicle, free gas, free car washes, free tires, free oil changes? Uber doesn’t have a scaling problem because it doesn’t cost Uber a penny to have every single Uber driver on the road and driving at the same time. That’s because Uber only pays for the rides its drivers give. There’s no cost associated with a driver sitting idling in a parking lot. No cost to park that car to Uber, they don’t pay the parking ticket when it’s parked illegally. They don’t pay to store the car, or to fix the car, or to wash the car. Of course there will always be a small % of people who live above their means trying to squeeze some value out of their ego purchase, just like the brand new SUV owners I saw giving Uber rides to keep the repo man away, but the vast majority of people don’t want or need strangers puking in their car after a night at the bar. They don’t want teens booking a ride & having sex in the back seat, and they definitely don’t want their vehicles used to ferry drugs across their city,

Because immigrants don’t have multiple CEOs to pay for, the corporations didn’t spend billions on their R&D, there was no political lobbying at the federal, state, and county/city levels to put them in the driver’s seat, they have no shareholders to pay, when they break down you simply replace them, for free, with the next immigrant. They’re self cleaning, self repairing, and self replicating. When there’s civil unrest, they don’t drive into the center of a protest, en masse, to be lit on fire.

>This doesn’t seem controversial taxi companies exist and have for a long time in a profitable fashion. But we're not talking about taxi companies really. We're talking about a sizeable chunk of the world's car owners ditching their cars for robotaxis....for...reasons...but those reasons sure as hell aren't cost. Of course I'll pay $2/mile once in a blue moon for a taxi, but not going to work every day.

Just wait until someone has their car pooped in. There isn’t enough money to make me deal with those type of issues.

>You can absolutely get a car to drive that will cost you less than $0.70/mile all in not counting your driving labor I'll bite: How come the people over at Waymo haven't figured that out?

The calculus of the fraud has morphed over time. No longer will Branch Elonians reap Robo-Riches from their personal cars...rather, TSLA will hoard all the robotaxis for themselves and make more money than the entire world's GDP giving Robo-Rides. And at the Robo-Reveal, they showed a specialized robot that would clean the car interiors (not sure why they wouldn't use their 20 billion strong army of poverty ending Temu C3POs, but lets not get too deep into the details).

You understand that $0.70/mile deduction/reimbursement is for the vehicle costs and not the driving service right? The IRS rate is a simplified rate to account for your vehicle's costs without having to amortize your vehicle lifespan or allocate maintenance costs. Your labor paid to you in wages if you were driving on company time already goes against a company's net income so if you earn min wage or $10k/hr as CEO, it has no bearing on what self driving is worth. Whether I'm delivering a pizza or delivering a liver transplant for a billionaire CEO, the reimbursement per mile for vehicle use is the same but the amount actually paid for the service is very, very different. When you're an Uber driver, you can deduct that $0.70/mile from your net fares because it's your car or you can calculate your actual costs for your car. The income you earn after expenses is taxable income to you. A Jaguar iPace gets 2.3 miles per kwh. In the course of 200k miles, that's 87k kwh. At $0.20/kwh, that's $17.4k in energy. Msrp on one is $72k. Let's say $7.5k for 5 sets of tires, 2k for brakes, and you're at $99k. Let's say it's another $6k in insurance in that time. Then you're only at $0.525/mile in costs if you were to personally pilot that iPace to 200k. If you were to do a similar equation for a Model 3, you would probably cut those costs by 1/3rd. This is why traveling salesmen and other road warriors often choose very fuel efficient vehicles as they can earn quite a bit on their vehicle reimbursement.

Agreed - also the Tesla vision that you can "add your car to the fleet while on vacation" to make money I think makes almost no sense, because most people don't want strangers having sex or throwing up in their car -- nor is there such a need for taxis that would realistically support a large percentage of people doing this. >we've proven that already by rarely taking public transit. While I again agree, I think unfortunately this decision was made for us when we built our cities for the car instead of the person. There are very few places in the US with adequate public transit and a dense enough population - most of them being big cities, which are also too expensive for most Americans. Suburbs may have public transit but they are an afterthought and don't help you get around a sprawling area where nothing is walkable.

>You understand that $0.70/mile deduction/reimbursement is for the vehicle costs and not the driving service right? Umm...yeah. That's my whole point. Lets simplify this: If it costs me ***X*** cents to drive my car a mile, how exactly will a RoboTaxi service chaffeur me around for any less than ***X***?...Because you know...if I'm going to ditch my personal car and all the convenience that comes with it, there's got to be something in it for *me*, right? Right? Because half the world's population isn't just going to give up their cars and start shoveling dollars at TSLA for nothing - you get that, right? It will have to cost a whole hell of a lot less than ***X***. The model doesn't matter. If you think a Model 3 costs 50 cents, then fine. I can drive *my very own* Model 3 around for 50 cents...and I guarantee no RoboService is going to shuttle me around in a Model 3 for less than that. Beater, luxury car, it DOES NOT MATTER. Whatever level of car I choose to move around in, I can do it cheaper DIY than hiring it out...because Robotaxis are still cars that still require all the same operating expenses...plus profit...plus overhead, plus cleaning the thing, plus book-keeping, etc. It will always be ***X+Y.*** Hell, in your very own example, you've worked yourself to the belief an I-Pace costs 53 cents...they charge around $2.00...yet they still don't make a profit. Well that's weird, isn't it. You understand how that makes my point, right? So while it might cost *you or me* 53 cents to operate that I-Pace, *Waymo* has to deal with $12.50 in ***Y*** (based on their losses and miles driven).

yeah this is a good point; the IRS mileage reimbursement works as a non-refundable income tax credit for rideshare drivers.

Nobody takes buses be sure they're stuck in the same traffic that I am in my own car that's my own space.

That’s not really a dollars and cents calculation just vibes. CEO salary and r&d is covered by Ubers profitably Replacement is covered by insurance Cleaning and repairing humans costs money and is covered through the drivers profitability It’s certainly possible that av tech can’t replace human cost, but it’s far from obvious that’s the case.

"Thanks for the F-shack. Love, Dirty Mike and the Boys"

I think that’s all covered in my original comment. Tesla isn’t going to replace most private car ownership, but that doesn’t mean that an AV taxi can’t be profitable by taking some of traditional taxis business.

Was uber making a profit off of you or were you a net cost. It is possible the only reason uber is profitable are the people underwater on car ownership, but my guess is they are not driving the majority of miles and wouldn’t noticeably affect Ubers profitably. Uber definitely does have a scaling issue. They are fighting two issues. Too much supply and drivers switch to lift, too little and riders switch to lift. They manage this through the pricing which is high when they need more drivers and low when they want fewer.

these are not universal truths about public transport and busses, it’s very US specific. There could be many reasons, car lobbying, suburban sprawl, stigma… I don’t know. Outside of the US people do use them plenty, even at much higher prices. I *wish* they were as cheap where I live as the prices you’re quoting.

Uber posted net losses from 2016-2022. Their net loss was $9.141 billion in 2022. Was Uber profiting off of me personally? I have no idea. Over 75% of drivers are registered & drive for both platforms. If there is market demand for ride share at any given day/time/location it exists across both platforms. And once again, it’s not costing either company anything to have drivers waiting around. Unlike the idle costs incurred by robotaxis.

Admittedly, I'm speaking of the US market...probably because (to my knowledge) this is the only place where large scale testing has been foisted on the public. You're right, public transit is very popular outside the US...but seemingly they're not going to allow Robotaxis until they...well...work. And none of them really work right now.

I would argue uber was intentionally unprofitable then. Killing existing taxis by undercutting on prices was the explicit goal. They’re profitable now and can be so while maintaining drivers. The idle rate cost is hidden but is there. They might not pay directly but if they have too many or too few drivers they’re hurting the long term financial position of the company. Tech companies have a cost for offering free food, but they recoup that cost in ways not measurable in a strictly accounting sense. Same thing with idle drivers or long pickup times, the cost exists in a way not measurable on the accounting ledger.

Nope. The streetcar systems and the wider inter-urban electric railroads were seldom profitable on their own. They were a loss leader for another innovation, residential electric. The electric companies needed the right of way to run their electric lines and they were building their power plants and had electricity to spare. When the government required the electric companies to ether be utilities or transit companies they all got out of the transportation business as it was a money looser. In parts of the Midwest in particular the electric railroads are gone but the power lines that were built along the same route are still there although upgraded. Economicly there is no money in hauling people, that's why they need massive ships and loads of questionable tactics to make cruse ships break even much less a small profit. Airlines aways struggle as any time they are not running nearly full capacity they get in trouble and need to cram more people in every plane every year. Passinger trains, nope, they have generally been a money looser everywhere. Even in densely populated Europe they need help as they can't change enough to cover the cost.

Yeah huge point that I've seen others make, too. Elon was hoping for "Tesla" to be synonymous for "electric car" but that ship has clearly sailed. His own hiccups and distractions have allowed other companies to successfully enter the market.

Or until some Tesla owners falsely accuses a rider of damaging their car so that they can get repairs done at the riders expense.

Haven't you heard? Tesla will be worth not one, but *twenty* trillion dollars. The man who lies at least as often as he breathes said it, so it must be true.

The fact is, people like Musk, who are pushing this "vision of the future" haven't really thought it through. What happens when my autonomous car/taxi has an accident 5, 10 or more miles from my home? How is it going to get fueled/recharged while out on its own? What happens when someone out on an all-night bender barfs all over the interior? Or a passenger has a seizure or other medical emergency? They're billionaires and "Idea Men" so they don't need to be bothered with practical realities like the above. No way would I ever expose myself to the endless liability risks and practical complexities involved with something like Musk's RoboTaxi concept.

Assuming you solve the self-driving technical issues AND the legal/regulatory issues (both tall orders), there's a point where user adoption hits critical mass. There are just a large chunk of the current population who will NEVER use it. You need new generations who grew up with it. Example: In 1968, the US federal government required seat belts to be installed in all new passenger cars. By 1994 (\~25 years later), less than 60% of people wore seat belts - despite widespread evidence they saved people. It's over 90% adoption today (50+ years later) even though close to half of the people who are killed in crashes weren't wearing seat belts. My point is... it took government mandates and decades and decades to make a meaningful impact - and it's still an issue.

The copium in Tesla investor spaces has always been crazy: First, it was the EV market was worth a trillion dollars and only Musk could make a good EV. It was true until other manufacturers made cars that filled in different gaps that Tesla's lack of innovation and iteration in the car space didn't fill. Next, it was FSD was worth a trillion dollars, and it was going to be how everyone was going to drive around instead of dumb humans. It was never true, and the constant reports of FSD failures proves it. Next, Tesla was going to reinvent the Semi truck and make it so that every Semi was going to be an EV semi. Yeah, well. That didn't happen. A handful of Tesla Semi do some short haul journeys and that's it. Next, it was that Cybertruck was going to delete every truck and make it a trillion dollar company. ...... I don't think i need to elaborate why this is wrong. 🙃 Next, Optimus was going to be in every house and give a trillion dollars. Turns out the robot is just humans controlling a slowly moving robot which can't really do much except be an expensive discord call with a Tesla employee. Next, it was that, no wait, Tesla is ACTUALLY an AI company and they will make trillions off of their AI. None of their AI products are anything more than a marketing gimmick and have very little use, with all of their AI actually being severely behind even China. Next, the Robotaxis are going to replace every taxi and rideshare... A space that is largely already populated by more established businesses that use multiple types of sensors for safety. The first week of Robotaxis alone showed many failures and required a safety attendant. Seriously, all these failures are due to Musk meddling. Unfortunately, Tesla can't oust the cause of their failures: Musk. If they do, that'll bring the stock price down to $100bn (90% drop), which is where it should be. Instead, they are jockeying to give Musk $25bn in stock? Jeebus. I still don't understand how Tesla investors can hold onto their stock. This crash is gonna make Enron look like a rounding error.

There is a lot of business there if there is a moral panic about human drivers being too deadly to be permitted, new cars are made too expensive to afford and the cars on the street are aged out or made to comply with new regulations. What makes people think this is some favor that will be a net benefit to them or society? The game now is a couple tech empires are gobbling up everything and will collect subscriber fees.

For example Robotaxi bumps uber out of business Uber is worth 200 billion and they take an40% cut of total fare. Add that back for the valuation at 200 / 0.60 that’s 333B I don’t see how it’s even close to 1T… Even Lyft gets bumped out at 9B /0.60 that’s another 15. Still short 760B… How does it math?

I'm curious. Does anyone consider the massive security risk this sort of automation brings with it? This is a ready made delivery service for illegal or illicit substances on a good day. And pretty easy self delivering bomb on a bad day. I'm concerned about this for drone transport as well in the future given what they are used for in Ukraine. Unfortunately I think we are being too naive on this. What do you guys think?

Strengthen the cult's belief worth trillions.

Imagine instead of 10 Neighbours owning cars that are unused 95% of the time, 2 robocars lurk around and shuttle them wherever they want to go.

And why do the Cybertruck dingleberries care about four wheel steering, steer by wire, 48V "architecture" and all that happy horseshit if they think soon the truck will "drive itself" anyway? Cognitive dissonance? They name is Tesla Stan.

Uber has a $2.50 base rate plus $1.40 per mile, increasing to $3 at peak times.

Just to play devil’s advocate, if Tesla figures out autonomy, it will increase their car sales significantly. But this advantage would be eroded over time by other car companies implementing it. How long would it take?

It’s not a vision. It’s a hallucination. Ketamine induced.