Tesla vs. Waymo: The Trillion Dollar Robotaxi Battle - Impakter

Why TF does everyone report on Taxicabs as a trillion dollar business with straight faces?

They think it’s still 1990

The thesis claiming the trillion dollar opportunity is linked in the article: [https://research.contrary.com/deep-dive/the-trillion-dollar-battle-to-build-a-robotaxi-empire](https://research.contrary.com/deep-dive/the-trillion-dollar-battle-to-build-a-robotaxi-empire)

I can see autonomous driving as common as cruise control in a few years but I can't see people giving up their cars for taxi service.

There are lots of scenarios where people will swap over to robotaxi. Second car owners, people that live in cities etc. These will reduce the amount of cars sold each year which will push the prices up to protect profits. This will lead to more people switching to taxis.

Also why do they report it as a battle, Tesla pretty much lost.

" $134 billion in size, to a potentially much bigger $5 trillion " With no explanation why people usage of taxi will suddenly increase by a factor 38, just because there is no driver

I'm genuinely curious: Why do you think these same people (2nd car owners and city dwellers) aren't using taxi services **right now**? The only differentiator that I can think of between an Uber and a "Robotaxi" is cost (and IMHO that has yet to be demonstrated)...would I really give up my second car if I could get a slight discount on taxi service? I seriously doubt it. So again, why? Why this automatic assumption that people will dump their cars and start riding in taxis?

IMHO, TSLA has only pretended to show up for this "battle". Its like me showing up to an NFL game in a jersey.

If they haven’t done it when the need is already being met through taxis, Uber, etc, why would they just because the driver is a robot?

Why would I care if my taxi has a driver or not? I will not pay more for a cab without a driver, and honestly, I don't think the majority of the population will. So where will the money come from to reach this $5 Trillion market 😭

This. I’ve been saying the same thing for some time: one of the biggest challenges for public transportation (or taxis) is giving up your personal vehicle and ALL of the other issues that arise from not having all of your belongings in your vehicle. One of the other huge issues is luggage: who’s going to load all of your luggage in an autonomous vehicle? Especially with non-ambulatory people.

You can claim that the explanation is insufficient (or incorrect) but how can you claim that there's no explanation: *ARK’s Tesla share price projections may be hard to believe, but the market opportunity is based on a function of turning non-consumption into consumption. On average, various types of public transit* [*cost*](https://www.ridetherapid.org/about-the-rapid/performance/cost-effectiveness) *\~$1.42. More fixed route transportation, like light bus and rail, can cost* [*$0.31*](https://www.ridetherapid.org/about-the-rapid/performance/cost-effectiveness) *per mile but are only accessible for a fraction of use cases. If robotaxis could continue to drop to the average cost of $0.25 per mile, you open up a broad universe of use cases.*

On January 5, 1971 in Martin, TN the Washington Generals broke the Harlem Globetrotters' 2,495 game winning streak. And if that shit can happen why should Wall Street not cling to Tesla's delusions of grandeur and other random bullshit stock pumps.

It has to be significantly cheaper or have a subscription service that could make sense across a larger family. You’re correct that replacing the taxi as it is now is not going to work.

As I mentioned to another poster it has to be significantly cheaper or be part of a subscription service. I’d agree that if someone isn’t using a taxi service at the moment they probably wouldn’t need a robotaxi (especially if the public transport is sufficient).

😂😂😂 You are completely right, time to put all my faith in every declining business i can find

Wall Street analysts that were born rich and raised in Manhattan believe everyone is going to stop buying our own cars and just rely on taxis to shuttle us everywhere just like they do.

Tesla isn’t even on the field.

For me, a huge obstacle is kids. Half the cars in any parking lot have "nests" of kids' car seats, toys, baby wipes, little league gear, etc...people are going to give that up and start installing their car seats in half a dozen robotaxis every day? And haul all the toys and wipes around? Nevermind the "Robotaxi" demonstrated last year doesn't even have a rear seat, and you'd have to stick you baby seat in the front.

ok, that's some numbers, but now where is the math to arrange them to reach a factor of 38

Isn't that moving the goal post? You claimed no explanation - neither insufficient nor incorrect explanations.

Absolutely. 💯 I live in a decent sized metro area with a huge sprawl and it’s simply never made any sense for me to use limited public transit or taxis opposed to using my vehicle, especially for trips to the airport. That’s not to say I’m not a huge advocate for public transit; I believe we should give up some reliance on personal vehicles, but I don’t see a future for autonomous taxis scaling beyond a few dense metro cities.

Several problems with this. - you need enough robotaxis for "rush hours" or people won't switch. (I mean, I don't really care if I have to wait for a taxi when I go home drunk at 2AM but that wouldn't fly going to work when I need to be there at a certain time and no, I won't wake up 45 minutes earlier just to be sure I'm on time) but then a bunch will be idle in off-peak hours (minus time needed for recharge/cleaning) - Prices. Other than for novelty aspect, you'll need to be cheaper than regular taxis/Ubers/public transports or people won't switch thus lowering company's margin (sure, you don't need drivers but you'll need some smart IT guys to keep your fleet running and they don't come cheap) - This one is anecdotal, I admit. Most people I know who take taxis on a regular basis are elderly or disabled and it would be difficult for them to use a robotaxi vs a regular one where the driver can help them to get in and out. - A lot of people just like to drive, they won't sell their cars and switch to robotaxis.

I don’t see a world where it’s possible to get anywhere near $.25/mile. The cost of the car itself, Insurance, energy, maintenance, and cleaning would add up to more than that. And then add all of the infrastructure and overhead to support it. The flaw in the math here is that expansion of TAM relies on numbers that are not achievable, and/or would not provide sufficient margin to justify Tesla’s market cap.

How big a business is it?

I dunno - you'd have to *pay me* to lug around car seats and strollers all day and re-install them in several robotaxis every day. I think many of the factors that keep us in our personally owned vehicles have nothing at all to do with cost. BTW, the federal mileage rate is 70 cents. This is a well studied number, not just some guess. 70 cents. So how much less will robo-rides cost? How much money will I have to save to give up the luxury of being able to hop in my car and "go"? Uber rides sure as hell don't cost 70 cents right now...does removing the driver save enough? Highly doubtful, IMHO.

"I provided a ridiculous and patently absurd explanation to your claim of no explanation! Moving the goal posts!"

The global ride-sharing/taxi/paid driver industry is $210 Billion. So the market will need to increase by more than four times AND a single company will need to capture literally the entire market.

Right... because taxis currently constitute a trillion-dollar segment of the economy. These people are delusional.

They won't. I personally love driving. Nothing like rowing gears on a v6 turbo.

Uber mkt cap: $200b… 5x uber isn’t crazy to me. Profitability per ride of Waymo at scale in several years could surpass uber, and the Waymo mkt in my mind is way bigger than just ride hailing

Because that's what the stock market is valuing it at, and that's a company that is unlikely to deliver.

The only way you can even sniff $0.25/mile is if you believe fElon's bullshit about how EVs don't require any of the maintenance that ICEVs require.

Tesla doesn't have a competitive technology. Setting aside for a moment these are only viable in the kind of urban area that now absolutely despises Musk.  If you drive more than 5000 miles a year, robotaxi is not economical unless it's being given away.

How could it be bigger than ride hailing? It's literally ride hailing? Also, Uber's Market Cap is not the same thing as the volume of actual business being done. That Uber's Market Cap is the same as the actual revenue of all ride-share and taxi companies globally is a stock market issue.

It's literally part of the ride hailing / taxi market.

The stock market is fundamentally broken if we're valuing Uber alone at 200 Billion, claiming Robot Taxis are 1 Trillion, but the actual total global revenue of the industry market is 210 Billion.

While fundamentally undercutting each other. The point of robotaxi is to not pay a driver, so it has to charge less than a driver service.  It also needs to charge less after maintenance and insurance costs, which rideshare companies heavily offload on the contractor.

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That’s like saying that the pharmaceutical industry is much bigger than the drug industry.

It is weird…. It’s an industry that existed for ages. And suddenly it’s a valuable commodity when it never was before?

Never lived outside of the city or in a different country. FSD is completely unfeasible for most driving in roughly half the world. You won’t see it working in Canada’s winter weather, Africa’s intermittent infrastructure, south east Asia’s abundance of scooter traffic and even places like Italy and Greece where traffic laws a mere suggestions combined with roads that were designed a thousand years ago. Hell a majority of the places that it could replace cars have public transportation that is more cost effective already.  Half of the world’s population at a minimum won’t have accessible infrastructure for FSD. As said by someone else FSD will be like cruise control on cars in the future. It just won’t replace the needs for cars by most people.

Sorry but what’s the argument that Tesla can scale faster than something that has more precise sensors, more compute, more attention to safety, and better engagement with local governments?

In 2016, Leicester City won the Premier League. They started the season as 5000-1 underdogs.

Reading the tea leaves they will make it too expensive to own your own car and force you to take a ride share from a corporation for daily use. In the USA (pre-tariffs): Average car price is $48,907 (depreciation is 50%) Average monthly car insurance is $213 So that $750 before fuel and other costs. That is roughly 3.2 years of Federal Minimum wage to pay for a car. Average used car price is $25,512 And our current administration is anti-public transportation and looking to privatize everything.

How about bigger than the current ride hailing market? The current market is limited by how many drivers are willing to drive, and where and when. Driverless cars can remove that bottleneck in cases where a driver can’t or doesn’t want to drive. Then there’s riders who don’t want to ride with someone, either. Think about how many stories we’ve heard over the years about people getting SA’d in the back of an Uber. Kind of hard to get molested by an autonomous car, though I’m pretty sure Phony Stark has someone working on it.

The market is, and always is, limited by the demand. A sure sign of the fact that supply is matching demand is how fucking easy it is to get a car or taxi almost instantly in any urban market. (spoiler alert: It is REALLY REALLY easy)

I have the same question there's no way

it’s a trillion if TSLA does it. 50-100B if Waymo does it. rational markets and all

Lmao and why should it be bigger than Uber at all?

Zero chance of that for this car owner.

It's a nonsense "explanation"

If 10% of America (34 million people) spent $100 a week on taxis it would be $177 billion dollars spent on the service per year. Subtract from that operating expenses and that's probably the basic math used to determine the first number. The second number just looks like a, "let's see if the idiots believe this shit." The question is, how many rides ultimately equals $100 and can you make it seem like a better experience than owning a car? I do know couples in US cities that didn't have great mass transportation where one spouse worked from home that have dropped down to one car and relied on Uber and rental cars for those moments they needed a second car. It mostly worked for them until their kid hit an age that they were constantly needing to be shuttled around all the time. Ultimately they went back to having a second car.

It's not limited by supply at all, it's limited by demand. Americans want th freedom to jump oin their own car on a whim and go anywhere they want with zero waiting. This is why public transportation and taxi service has never competed with car ownership and it never will.

Because I'm responding to the claim that the explanations weren't there not that the explanations were bad? I would have added nothing if the claim was that the explanation provided is bad.

I despise the media for constantly feeding us these idiot takes Tesla has not done a single autonomous ride and Waymo has passed ten million. What competition is there? Also what trillion dollar industry? Trillion dollar stock bubble more like

Where the fuck are people getting this trillion dollar price tag? If we have self driving cars, why would I pay to use somebody else’s self driving car when my car can just self drive me to where I need to go.

Urban markets aren’t the only markets, and the untapped demand is much higher than the current riders. I’m thinking about markets like the small towns that might have 1 Uber and Lyft driver, and it’s Tony. What happens when Tony has his fifth DUI in 3 years and now no one can get around? Now the entire town is screwed. Also, let’s not forget that people get old and can’t drive forever. A lot of people skip doctor’s appointments and trips to the grocery store because they can’t get an Uber when they need one. Finally, not everyone either wants to or can own a car. Car ownership is expensive. I know a lot of folks that if they had the chance to go car free, they’d do so in a heartbeat. But they can’t for one reason or another. Giving them the option of riding in a driverless car changes the game completely.

I had to intervene this morning because I went under an underpass headed east and the sudden change in light intensity on the other side blinded it.

I live in one of those markets. Again, there is not enough demand to cost-justify an increase in supply. There aren't more Uber drivers in Bozeman Montana because there isn't enough demand to make it profitable. Why would building out a robot infrastructure and dumping more taxis onto roads that lack a demand for more taxis be a profitable endeavor for any company?

Exactly, for Robo-Taxis to reach these projected revenue streams, automobile ownership would need to drop off precipitously and other public transit disappear. Auto makers will fight hard to keep sales up. Ebikes are an increasingly viable commuting option, especially if new solid state batteries end the fire safety issues.

The expectation is that all cities would replace personal cars with robotaxis pickup, which is pretty silly.

If you go with Uber annual revenue it’s only about $50b. A robotaxi would be cheaper than uber rides so people would be more inclined to use these instead of public transport or even their own car if it’s cheap enough. The potential revenue is high if successful

Tesla thinks they're a trillion dollar business, Waymo knows they're not.

Not having a car means at a bare minimum being at the mercy of long wait times and high costs getting picked up if you ever go past the suburbs. That's assuming they even offer service at all. Seems like a pretty tough sell for a population that buys pickup trucks in large numbers that they never actually use for hauling anything. And if you already own a car it's going to be cheaper to drive it than a robotaxi. Even if somehow a lot of people did stop wanting to own cars it'd at least take years for them to largely stop using their current ones.

It's baked into Tesla's stock price. So, you have to believe, or else that means Tesla is wildly overvalued, and we can't have that.

Yup. In the mean time China just keeps building high speed railways like there's no tomorrow, builds an electricity grid that allows them to crush us with ai capability, builds too much housing instead of too little.

It's not even a $100Bn market today so you'd need to increase revenue >10x which if you believe costs will be lower requires like a 15-20x increase in usage. Transportation is largely a surge market. We need to get to and from work, to and from events, etc. If you meet capacity for those demand you have a lot of waste all day (right now that's our cars sitting in lots). That off peak demand STILL needs to be paid for, so you end up paying Tesla or Waymo to (hopefully) park their car instead of one you own. Not owning a car is only cheaper if you can time share capacity with other riders. That's extremely unlikely except in very high density markets where other forms of transit make infinitely more sense.

The assumption is YOU don't own a car. If you combine the total vehicle sales market and taxi/rideshare market it's about $3T so the assumption is they're capturing 1/3rd OF TOTAL VEHICLE SPEND. absurd

I'm not saying ENRON but ..

I watched The Big Short yesterday. My alarm bells are going off.

Interesting math they’re using that’s for sure, appreciate the break down!!

The greatest Charlatan of our generation is going to keep going until the gig is up. TSLAQ is only 2 to 4 years away!

I mean I'm using USA numbers, they may be looking globally

Why anyone would use an inferior technology like cameras only is just nuts? All of the limitations of the human eye and no benefit. Sunsets, sunrises, rain and poor visibility that can be solved by radar and lidar paired with cameras…

Corruption and bribery

Really, ten years later Tesla is doing what they made fun Waymo. Geofencing and custom mapping. Tesla can't even do that driverless.

You are replacing the cheapest piece of the system (driver) with technology! That ought to count for something.

Kinda like 90s Tyson vs a tickle-me Elmo is a “battle”. Anyone who thinks Tesla is poised to win such a fight is delusional, or lying.

No way. Not in most of America, anyway. Maybe in densely populated cities, (which already have robust public transit as well as plenty of taxis).

In California, Tesla's Robotaxis will actually be driven by a human. Their "FSD" tech is so shitty that nobody in their right mind would let those things share the road with innocent motorists. They're allowed in Texas but that's a state where an oil company's negligence causes a refinery to explode and the fine is 53 cents so robot cars killing people isn't a big problem for them

Not a fan of Robo Taxis in general. Many years of policy written in blood, still to be had. That woman drowning in her Tesla, or those kids burning to death in a rollover accident. That should give anyone pause for thought. The overall outlook of the toll of human lives taken early on by Tesla makes a ride in this brand a larger risk than necessary. I don't want or need help in making purpose driven and experimental live life ending decisions.

Everybody seems to be assuming that people are gonna want to ride in these things I love my own car. What age brackets are gonna be driving in these things

Nice exactly

Lol

They’re trying to find a spot in the parking lot

Tesla is a overpriced diner at best.

I love that I’m getting downloaded, it means more profits for me. Short Uber, long google. The ride hailing industry will grow substantially as prices for ride hailing drops. Simple economics. Demand will go up as prices come down… prices will come down because labor cost will plummet—no human drivers.

Driver is the most expensive part (fuel is very close 2nd). Unless you're UberX'ing people in a Rolls Royce Cullinan, the human cost per hour is much more than the vehicle itself. Autonomous vehicles solve many scenarios where the current solution is to have a 2nd vehicle and higher vehicle utilization can mean less real estate dedicated to parking. The 2 days/week you have different schedules but you're then locked into another vehicle. How many square feet of your house are dedicated to car storage? How much space at your office or local big box retailer? Do you really need a 3 row SUV for junior and the 2-3x times a year you see the grandparents? Taxis and rideshare run about $82B/yr. The additional opportunities to reshape a lot of the transportation infrastructure where the big money is at.

As ride-hailing service prices go down, demand will go up

Yep. And that mkt will increase in size as demand increases due to prices dropping. Waymo doesn’t have to pay a human driver

It would be like saying Pfizer has a monopoly on a product so inexpensive and in such high demand that it not only takes business from competitors, but also grows overall demand enough to expand the entire pharmaceutical industry

Demand increases as prices decrease

How much money do you think Waymo has spent in their attempts to replace a minimum wage (or lower) human driver? How much of that is once off, how much is ongoing operating expense and how much of that will scale with their operations?

Inline 6 turbo, 6-speed

It won’t be

Yes. It is.

It doesn’t, it won’t.

How many taxis do rich people use? 0

But we don’t. And we won’t.

The driver being the most expensive is certain only in some parts of the world. We took a 3 Person private ride in SEA of 350Km (217miles) that took us almost 5 hours for $100. The car was actually a nice SUV, I doubt autonomous vehicles can compite with that, just by the hardware and processing power alone.

And disregard for public safety

And never clean it. Or change tires. Or charge it.

But but it measures photons!

Question for a rich person! 😆

Prices going down does not change demand. Demand is expressed as a function of price. A decrease in price would change the "quantity demanded" but not actually change demand.

Tesla wa snever in the game, just desperate to pump the stock

But auto summon is circling the wrong car park

To gate... or not to gate... that is the question

Cheaper than uber, higher profit margin, personal vehicle, etc

And this is after Uber has cut driver payouts to as low they can go. You barely make any money driving Uber.

When all cars will be able of self driving soon why would anyone use a robotaxi? If you don't own a car you should use a bike or public transport most of the time, and then you could rent a car if you really need one and every rental car is a robotaxi by that time.

If you care about driver cost, the best way have been discovered last century. Metro, train and busses, in that order. One driver can carry dozens to thousands of people. Cars scale horribly. 1 ton of metal per person... It's just the USA that has car lobbies so strong as to kill all public transport. In the USA cities are made for cars, and not for people, that is mind blowing.

I agree that it’s silly to use your own car seats in a taxi. On the other hand when they’re a few years older, the thought of putting them in the Robotaxi and waving goodbye as it takes them to their destination would make my life a lot easier!

What you don't account for is that qualified bus drivers are paid more than taxi drivers and remain the highest cost per passenger mile cost of bus service. If buses were highly utilized, they'd likely be more efficient than they are. Also, autonomy could drive them as well for even greater value. https://www.reddit.com/r/transit/s/7QbZCcNHfj Yes, a train is more efficient. It's also very difficult to build or to reach to non-dense areas. I live in the city and a 10 minute walk from the train and one stop from my office and about 30 min train ride. Still rarely take it as it can be a very sweaty walk in business wear especially with luggage. It's not cheap to live near close to a train station in many parts of the country. Multi modal transit is needed even if trains exist.

Do you see driver services getting cheaper in the US or Europe or even in places like China? Cost of hardware goes down with scale and tech advances. Cost of someone's time has likely won't go down nearly as quickly.

No mention of Baidu's Apollo Go. They have driven almost 100 million miles in China and their 6th gen robotaxi costs under $30k to make. They are the global competetion.

... You know, here in Europe cities are getting rids of cars altogether in the city center. You can just walk, and find yourself in a shopping mall, because half of the city isn't wasted on parking lots. It didn't click to me how absurd urban design is in the USA until I went there. Suddenly the kids in the show lamenting the mall was far made sense, because malls aren't SUPPOSED to be far. They are just there a few minutes away. In Europe.

A new drug that does something that other drugs don’t do is not the same as opening a new taxi company. Do you people ever actually read the words you type before you hit send?

I'm not hating trains and buses. I bought my home near a rare train station in Atlanta for the flexibility. I usually take a train when it makes sense in my work travels. Europe had the benefit that most of its cities developed long before cars. Was in London recently. Using the Underground was very convenient most of the time and the few times we needed a car to get around, traffic was still quite terrible despite congestion charges. It's also a super flat city so I'd be biking around everywhere if I lived there. Still almost 80% of UK residents own a car. Even in super dense cities like Tokyo, a taxi is sometimes a necessity once you get away from the city center. Japan still has 60% car ownership which is pretty close to EU #s. Autonomous could reduce that and reuse space dedicated to parking today. I'm betting there's transformative good in autonomous. I absolutely don't believe Tesla will be the one delivering it.

From my perspective, it's for the cult. Some of the comments from X Tesla fans are truly mind boggling. They genuinely believe that Musk will have driverless cars nationwide in less than a year. And maybe he will, but it's so Musk-esque. He will put peoples lives in danger as he sorts through tech failures and problems.

How is it these analysts keep coming out and saying Robo taxis $300 of Tesla‘s share price do they have a taxi service or is it just 10 cars in Austin I must be missing a lot from what I understand they’re starting a cab company

Yeah! Tell me you hate America if you think fsd doesn't come directly from God, I mean Elon

That is true and eventually it will be more expensive but currently it is not and I don't see it happening globally by 2030. Have you seen some of the projections made?.

Honestly, people who love America should actually hate it right now. What it has become stands in direct opposition of what we thought America was supposed to be.

I mean I hate Elon as much as the next guy, but once this goes mainstream there will be more than one player and I guess, eventually, Tesla will get it right.

How much do you travel abroad where it's cheap? How much do normal people? Add people who would get rid of their cars, or at least the second one. Trillion $ industry ewentually no doubt.

The cult of Tesla never accounts for the fact that competition exists, it was like that for EVs, solar energy, batteries and it's now like that for autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots.

If autonomous car gets solved the economy of scale and all the opportunity to optimize routes and make money with an autonomous fleet would likely result in most people not wanting or simply being priced out of owning a self-driving car.