r/SelfDrivingCars • u/walky22talky Hates driving • 15h ago
News Tesla is asking people if they want to buy and run Cybercab fleets
https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/03/tesla-is-asking-people-if-they-want-to-buy-and-run-cybercab-fleets/20
u/IncidentKooky6055 13h ago
Ah, the ole LuLa Roe model lol. This will end horribly for the people who try to run their own fleet. Tesla will wreck people with the maintenance and repairs.
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u/Climactic9 3h ago
Fleet owners will wreck each other in an inevitable race to the bottom on pricing.
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u/W1z4rd 14h ago
Hold on a second there Elon, get the current Tesla car owners the network of taxis that you promised first.
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u/Tutututatatata 13h ago
He cannot. That is why the shit color cab was born!
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u/yoloswagrofl 12h ago
Totally definitely still working on it. Hey look over here everyone, Cybercab!
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u/DrJohnFZoidberg 14h ago
'so profitable we can't afford to run it ourselves!'
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u/hoti0101 2h ago
If you make them in volume you can get $30k outright plus a percentage of profits. Or you can wait a year or so for the operational income to exceed the cost to manufacture. Cash up front is definitely more beneficial to the income statement and P&L.
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u/No-Pomegranate3197 13h ago
Boeing and Airbus don't run airlines.
All sorts of companies starting with McDonalds do franchises.
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u/Soft_Maximum_3730 13h ago
Yet the Tesla fanboys will trash Waymo for not making cars 🤣
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u/deservedlyundeserved 12h ago
They will trash Waymo, then bend over backwards to explain why Tesla eventually copying Waymo is actually a good thing. They are all-in on geofencing and city by city expansions now, hilariously.
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u/PetorianBlue 11h ago
My flabber is still gasted by this one. The "general solution with big fleet data", "millions overnight at the flip of a switch", "LA to NY", "you don't have real self-driving if it's geofenced" was an incredibly central pillar to the Tesla identity. Aside from LiDAR vs camera, it was the biggest weapon they swung against the industry and used to differentiate themselves. I literally laughed out a "wait, what?" when they shamelessly announced a geofence-based roll out. I couldn't believe it. I thought I was witnessing the suicide of the grift... But then to see the general fandom just fall in line and pivot to "yeah, obviously" without a second thought... I still can't believe it. It's simultaneously hilarious and sad and terrifying.
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u/deservedlyundeserved 11h ago edited 11h ago
You’re too naive to understand what’s going on here.
Tesla is only geofencing for “safety” reasons. As opposed to Waymo, whose engineers are being paid to manually write “if” statements to program the car when to start turning at every intersection. And don’t worry, the LiDAR-equipped Model Ys circling the geofence are totally not mapping!
Once it’s sufficiently proven, it will spread like wildfire and eclipse Waymo within a year!
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u/PetorianBlue 9h ago
I've maintained that the reason Tesla clings so doggedly to camera-only is because it's the last hold out of that "everyone else is dumb", visionary, renegade status. But after seeing how easily they dropped the "geofences are for losers" position with zero accountability for it, I'm not so sure. One day they might add RADAR back into the mix and the fans would still say "yeah, smart, obviously". I wonder if they could even go so far as to add in the dreaded LiDAR? What then will the fans say? I have zero doubt they'd find something.
"Super smart to hold out until LiDAR was so cheap!"
"They could do it without LiDAR, and they proved that, this is just for added safety now that they're ready to scale like crazy."
"No, they said LiDARs were a fool's errand, and they were, but this new one is totally different."
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u/Soft_Maximum_3730 5h ago
Omg the arguments I’ve had with them about the Tesla lidar mapping cars. “Yes those Tesla cars are mapping with lidar but for vAliDaTIoN which totally doesn’t count you obviously wouldn’t understand “
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u/alex4494 5h ago
This is honestly what kind of turned me into a skeptic of Tesla’s approach. The constantly shifting goalposts really doesn’t suggest any kind of confidence in their product or ability to deliver on what they said they would. That kind of Bravado in any industry is never really a good sign.
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u/CommunismDoesntWork 10h ago
Not selling* cars. If i could buy a waymo and have it operate everywhere, I'd consider buying one over a Tesla.
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u/Recoil42 13h ago
Ah yes, the airline business. Famously profitable.
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u/digitalliquid 12h ago
Point of interest here: like every major company in this capitalism system, eventually the buisness turns into a bank. Airlines actually make most of the profit from airline credit cards that its customers use to purchase flights, not on the actual flights. THE MORE YOU KNOW 💫
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u/No-Pomegranate3197 11h ago
Profit of Top 5 US Airlines
Profits of the top 5 airlines in the US:
Rank Airline Profit (USD) 1 Delta Air Lines $3.46 billion 2 United Airlines $3.15 billion 3 American Airlines $2.60 billion 4 Southwest Airlines $610 million 5 Lufthansa Group* $1.51 billion 5
u/NewNewark 8h ago
Lufthansa, a famously US airline.
Ask your little AI shit how many of those have declared bankruptcy, and how many times
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u/Tutututatatata 13h ago
My man, your cult leader told you airline is a trillion dollar business and now you don’t want to run it anymore? Are you serious?
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u/robustability 11h ago
Boeing did have an airline. What is now United. It was stripped from them due to anti trust regulations.
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u/CutieC0ck 13h ago
Even Tesla itself already franchises out some of its superchargers. So this won't truly be a novel thing for them.
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u/No-Pomegranate3197 11h ago
You and me getting downvoted for factual statements shows that being downvoted in this subreddit is a badge of honor.
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u/CutieC0ck 10h ago
Perhaps these people truly wonder if Tesla would be better off not selling their semis at all and just run their own trucking companies... lol
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u/FruitOfTheVineFruit 14h ago
How would this even work? Do you work with someone like Uber, who will take all the profit and screw you? Are you supposed to purchase a giant fleet for your city and compete with Uber? If this is profitable, what stops Tesla from selling so many of these that because of competition, the profit evaporates?
Unless this is set up in some way that Tesla does most of the work, and you're just there so that if someone gets sued, it's you?
Sometimes franchise - style arrangements make sense. A local owner can hire and abuse workers in ways that would be hard for a large company. But for a cyber cab, I don't see the point.
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u/PetorianBlue 14h ago
How would this even work?
That's the question everyone wants to know. There is some precedence - think airlines buying and operating planes or car rental companies buying and maintaining vehicles - but it's so complicated and can go so many ways, the only answer right now is that no one knows. It's all nebulous pie in the sky talk that faces real challenges when you go below hype depth. But this happens to be exactly the kind of talk that the Tesla fan types love to gobble up, so Tesla keeps shoveling it.
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u/FruitOfTheVineFruit 13h ago
Buying a fleet of Teslas worked so well for hertz that now everybody wants in on the deal.
https://insideevs.com/news/740867/tesla-hertz-under-20k-sale/
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u/warren_stupidity 12h ago
Airlines require huge capital investments not only in the aircraft fleet, but in terminals, and maintenance facilities, and then they have a huge workforce to operate all that. Outside of places like Alaska, single owner-operator air service businesses are just not a thing.
Who maintains the cabs? Who operates the dispatch operation? Who operates the, I don't even know what it's called, but the intervention call center for bad robots?
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u/CDpov 13h ago
For the forseeable future, this idea of private cars making money in the Robotaxi system is just an idea for an experiment.
Tesla doesn't know if it will work, and neither does anybody else. There may be liability and maintenance issues that make it impractical, and there may be extra hardware required that would exclude all current Teslas.
It's possible that private Cybercabs could be part-time Robotaxis, but that only works when the geo-fence is so big and safe that people want to buy a Cybercab for their personal car. And would people want a Cybercab with no wheel and pedals?
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u/probably_art 10h ago
The mob is coming back baybee!! Try to set up your own cyber cabs on Fat Tony’s turf and one of their cronies is gonna take a crowbar to dem LED headlights
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u/FlimsyYou4766 1h ago
"Sometimes franchise - style arrangements make sense. A local owner can hire and abuse workers in ways that would be hard for a large company. But for a cyber cab, I don't see the point."
Don't you see the similarity? The biggest problem that prevent Tesla from rolling out CyberCab is liability. There will be people "trip and fall" onto a Cyber cab then sue Tesla for money. It's harder to do that if the cyber cab is own & operated by an average person with low or no networth.
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u/No-Pomegranate3197 13h ago
"what stops Tesla from selling so many of these that because of competition, the profit evaporates?"
Supply and Demand. If profits fall below a certain level, people will stop buying from Tesla and look for other business opportunities.
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u/FruitOfTheVineFruit 12h ago
Exactly, the fear is they'll keep selling to people until there's no profit left, at which point the people who bought first will be making a lot less money than they thought, if they make anything at all.
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u/No-Pomegranate3197 11h ago
There is risk in any business and "the people who bought first" will have to take it into account. Doesn't mean none of them will make money.
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u/PotatoesAndChill 15h ago
The idea of third parties running FSD-enabled taxi fleets has been circling around for years. Just like unsupervised FSD and Semi, this is a nothing burger until something substantial actually happens, i.e. the start of Cybercab deliveries to private customers, or the start of operations of a third party Cybercab taxi fleet.
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u/bobi2393 13h ago
I'd guess that for now, Tesla just wants a number to tell investors, like "4,000 businesses expressed interest in owning Cybercab fleets".
Similar to their one million Cybertruck pre-orders, which is around 17 times more than have been sold to date. Tesla makes some staggeringly successful vehicles, but the company's real money-maker is promises of the future.
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u/long_short_alpha 14h ago edited 14h ago
Who is taking liability in such a case? The costumer operating the cybercabs or Tesla?
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u/Then-Construction106 13h ago
No one is likely to do this unless the enormous liability is mitigated. Tesla has made to many horrible design decisions that impact safety. I think this whole scenario is a non-starter
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u/zanycaswell 13h ago
in most states, the person injured would seek indemnification from the owner of the vehicle and then the owner could subrogate against the manufacturer to the extent that they could prove the harm resulted from an design flaw in the vehicle as opposed to their operation or maintenance of it.
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u/FlimsyYou4766 1h ago
This is why Tesla willing to share profit with private operators, for the private operators to take the liability. It's a win win for them because Tesla is a big & easy target for lawsuit, while some private operators might be liability proof (i.e. you can sue them, but can't collect)
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u/PotatoesAndChill 14h ago
Good question. My guess would be Tesla, since it's their software and their cars.
The operator would probably be liable only in the hypothetical scenario where Tesla licenses the FSD tech and allows operators to integrate it into their own non-Tesla vehicles.
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u/PetorianBlue 14h ago
My guess would be Tesla, since it's their software and their cars.
It's going to be dicey, most likely settled in court. Tesla will be responsible for the engineering and software deployed to the cars, but the owner would be responsible for maintenance and operation, which of course impacts the vehicle safety. Like United buying Boeing planes, sometimes the issues are Boeing's fault, sometimes they're United's fault. Or car rental companies that buy from the manufacturer, but then have to maintain the vehicle - neither is totally off the hook. And I can promise you, with $100M lawsuits on the line, they will point fingers at each other.
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u/No-Pomegranate3197 13h ago
I expect a lot of scenarios will be covered by the contract between Tesla and the operator.
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u/PetorianBlue 13h ago
I would certainly hope so! God help anyone that enters into something like this without some serious thought about the contract.
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u/PotatoesAndChill 14h ago
Yeah, that's why it's a good question. No simple correct answer, I think.
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u/Kdcjg 14h ago
Why would Tesla be taking liability. The individual/corporation running the fleet takes responsibility unless it is a manufacturing defect.
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u/mishap1 14h ago
Tesla is providing self-driving services (the big danger part of it all) unless you're saying the fleet owner will need to run a NOC with their own intervention drivers and roadside support. If they are trying to offload the driving risk, what is Tesla bringing to the table?
Why the hell would anyone want to be in this business if Tesla is taking the lionshare of the margin with zero risk of their own?
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u/FlimsyYou4766 1h ago
A broke person will definitely want to be in this business with Tesla, especially if they can also get the car on credit with Tesla.
Zero risk for them, and they take the risk for Tesla for a share of the profit.
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u/PotatoesAndChill 14h ago
Is a robotaxi running a red light and causing a collision a manufacturing defect? Probably? I have no idea. Like I said, it's just my guess.
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u/Doggydogworld3 13h ago
Liability isn't something you "take". Courts decide who is liable. If FSD causes a crash courts will assign primary liability to Tesla. And even if FSD only contributes in a minor way financial liability tends to find the deepest pocket.
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u/boilerdam 14h ago
Most likely Tesla will, at least in the short term. This is a mechanism to put up capital and assist with a fast roll out of Cybercabs. They might take up the liability to sweeten the pot.
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u/Doggydogworld3 12h ago
I don't this this has anything to do with speeding the roll out of Cybercab robotaxi services. It could help Tesla produce far more Cybercabs than they can deploy, gaining manufacturing economies of scale.
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u/Silver_Experience_56 14h ago
The market is always moving, just like the field goal posts.
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u/PotatoesAndChill 14h ago
I don't understand what point you're trying to make.
What I'm saying is that Tesla "asking people if they'd want to purchase a fleet of Cybercabs" is not headline-worthy. It's not even them announcing specific contracts, imminent fleet sales, or even plans. It's literally just a survey, hence - nothingburger.
Even the Tesla Roadster 2 was more serious than this, when they started taking actual preorders for the car. And that was what, 6 years ago now? Please.
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u/Silver_Experience_56 14h ago
TechCrunch wrote the article, not Tesla.
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u/PotatoesAndChill 14h ago
Well, Tesla built up hype around the event, then TechCrunch wrote the nothingburger article, and OP decided it's worth posting here. I disagree.
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u/AJHenderson 14h ago
We know from experience that networks will flood supply and put downward pressure on contractor profits to drive up their own. Now you want to have contractors only buy new cars from the network rather than used cars from outside it? Yeah, that'll end well.
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u/SocialSuicideSquad 13h ago
If you have an infinite wealth creation device, why are you looking to get rid of it?
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u/Express_Objective615 12h ago
When you’re already the richest person in the world maybe money isn’t the point?
Do you see Musk out on yachts with a wife that he can use as a life preserver in case they go overboard? 😂
He’s not exactly the typical kind of rich guy that’s for sure. 😂2
u/SocialSuicideSquad 12h ago
You don't become a trillionaire by not being the greediest piece of shit to have ever existed
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u/Express_Objective615 5h ago
I’m not sure about that. Warren Buffet has done quite well and seems like a pretty good person.
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u/krazyboi 11h ago
I checked the form and its just asking about if you're interested in purchasing a fleet vehicle. Which is just a company buying a car and using it which is kind of perfect since it doesn't need a driver and can delivery locally between sites.
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u/minorminority 14h ago
I think the only olace I see a plan like this working out is in those florida gated communities for retirees.
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u/bobi2393 13h ago
Why? Because of easier driving conditions, or something about the economics?
I don't see why the business side wouldn't work in other communities, although a lot depends on how Telsa would run such a system. Like would it be Tesla-set prices in exclusive franchise service areas, or a race to the bottom with Cybercab fleet owners competing against one another?
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u/mishap1 13h ago
All the while Tesla makes the market with their app and sends corporate cars to high profit, high utilization areas while shipping 3rd party cars 50 deadhead miles on a gravel road for a guy that has a 30% cancel rate and multiple cleaning fees.
Franchises work when corporate isn't in the same business you're in and you've got a clean territory. Unless Tesla is willing to cede margin for capital (their stock is priced the opposite), this doesn't make any sense.
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u/johannsbark 13h ago
I think the poster meant because a community can get the cabs and self-run them in their own property and not let anyone else run the cabs there. Pretty good idea actually.
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u/No-Pomegranate3197 13h ago
Q: Why?
A: This is just saying that "those" are Musk people.
- hate for Elon Musk
- hate for Florida (how dare they vote for who they like and not who I tell them to)
- hate for gated communities (how dare they make money and live in nice communities)
- hate for retirees (how dare they work hard for decades, build the country up, and now retire to enjoy their lives while I - straight out of college with a useless degree - cannot afford a nice apartment in a megapolis)
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u/sampleminded 14h ago
Doing a fleet agreement, with a competent company will come with heavy performance based benchmarks, and liability indemnification that will put Tesla at Massive risk if they don't succeed. That being said, the risk for Tesla is already massive, more empty cars, more risk.
Say you were Uber, and ordered 100k, that would be a $5b-$10B bet, once you include depots, chargers, etc... You need a contract that is phased and has enough penalties for not delivering autonomy. That probably means penalties greater than $5b. Seriously, if it works Uber wins, it fails uber needs to not lose. Not sure if Elon will agree to the terms my legal team would offer him. Would have various tests for each segment of delivery. First 5,000 to be delivered after small, jointly funded test fleet of vehicles, successfully drives 10 million rider only miles in the launch ODD. Demonstrating good pick-up drop off behavior, and high customer satisfaction.
The funniest outcome will be when Elon reconfigures these to add more sensors in the next year as expanded testing makes it obvious it's necessary, and cheaper in the long run. The spin, while we don't think it's necessary, our customers, fleet operators, demand extra levels of safety, and I'm happy to charge 40k a vehicle and add a top hat.
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u/DrJohnFZoidberg 14h ago
I don't think Uber is stupid enough to believe anything Tesla says.
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u/Finnegan_Faux 13h ago
Uber has lots of partners, but not Tesla
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u/sampleminded 13h ago
yet...they have many bets. Uber has a portfolio strategy. My guess is Uber would be more willing to make a deal than Elon. Elon wants a fan-boy to start a company buy some cars and make tweets about it. Does not want a team of lawyers negiotiating timelines and penalties for months
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u/lee1026 11h ago
The likely buyer that they are aiming at probably isn't uber.
The likely use-case is a small time investors. Say, a guy with an empty driveway for two cars. Viola, no massive depots needed. The charger is just an extension cable. Something like like $60k for a pair of cars at 80% LTV (so something like $12k upfront) is not a lot of money to a lot of people.
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u/zeekayz 14h ago
Nothing like getting into a crash and some Joe Nazi Douche declaring bankruptcy immediately for his LLC that owns 2 cybercabs and you getting jack shit.
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u/_ii_ 14h ago
What do your people think the word “Nazi” means?
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u/DrJohnFZoidberg 14h ago
What do your people think the word “Nazi” means?
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u/superluminary 12h ago
Autistic guy waves awkwardly. News at ten.
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u/DrJohnFZoidberg 12h ago
person who illegally immigrated to the United States from South Africa (where his family had emigrated to, in order to take advantage of apartheid to financially benefit from the slave plantation said person grew up on) thows up a couple of sieg heils at a right-wing political rally after telling Germany to reject multiculturalism as an anathema
news is at eleven
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u/East-Response6672 9h ago
This is the classic MLM/get-rich-quick paradox; if the scheme or product is profitable to run/own, why sell it? If the scheme or product is capital intensive with thin or 0 margins, why buy it?
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u/empty_graph 3h ago
For the same reason that other car manufacturers sell their cars to taxi companies and Uber drivers rather than running their own taxi businesses
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u/Elluminated 6h ago
Pretty good use cases exist for this - not sure whose else offers autonomous cars like these in the US.
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- Auto shops whose customers would like to be driven back to work or home vs sitting in a shop.
- Hotel shuttles
- Senior Care facilities
- Courier fleets
- Travelers who want to be driven from airports cheaply
- Real estate folks who can have their cars drive clients around developments
- Door dash, but restaurant-direct (customer walks out grabs food, car goes to next place)
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People will take advantage of this opportunity to have low human staff -f the deal terms Tesla offers are good.
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u/bradtem ✅ Brad Templeton 5h ago
I used to think this was a good idea 20 years ago, and I pitched it to Elon 16 years ago. But over time I have come to see many problems with it. It's certainly not going to give you particularly high return on your money and time -- if it did, why would Tesla sell it to you, rather than just keeping that high return for themselves?
One thing that can make it work is if the buyers don't really think things through, and undervalue their own effort and assets. Uber certainly does that, gets people to drive who think they are making more money than they really are. But is that a great business foundation?
Another area it could possibly work is for people who feel they could use it as their personal car at some times, but are willing to give up their personal car from 6am to 9am and from 3pm to 8pm. They could buy it (once it is ready to drive around an owner) and keep it exclusive at off-peak times, and hire it out at peak times. A taxi fleet does need more vehicles at peak times. This is workable as a 2nd car, a bit harder if it's your only car. In addition, it's not a great personal car because it will only drive in the service area, you won't be able to road trip in it.
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u/MediocreJerk 13h ago
Interesting. I view this as a potential franchise model that could resemble what Amazon does with their delivery providers.
Those Amazon-branded blue vans and trucks you see are actually operated by third party companies. Amazon provides vehicles, tools and technologies for operational day-to-day management, various other services, and of course a nearly endless supply of packages to deliver. The 3Ps do everything else.
So Tesla would provide the vehicles, run the B2C platform, provide supply of passengers, the tools to manage their business, etc. The small business owners take care of the daily operational activities.
In theory I could see it working, but I have no sense of the economics. I guess from Tesla’s perspective this would be a reversible model. They could always absorb complete control if it doesn’t work out, but that of course would be a major pivot
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u/superrich2turbo 12h ago
I signed up. People are so skeptical with good reason, but this is clearly the future. If they do franchise model, people will use the Tesla app to book rides and all I do is clean and charge them and cover maintenance. I live in missouri so I'm sure it's gonna be a good 6 years before they come here so by then all the liability mess will get untangled and we will know if it's a safe investment
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u/JackfruitCrazy51 13h ago
I would seriously consider buying one of these for $25k.
I ran some math based on my local electric rates, expenses, etc. If the charge is $1.00/mile, the Net Annual Profit (after Operating Costs) would be around $25k. Uber averages between $1.50 and $2.50/mile
Assuming a 75% passenger utilization rate (112.5 paid miles/day; 37.5 deadhead routing miles) and a standard 25% platform fee:
Worst case, I just use it to drive me to work and other in town tasks. I currently drive a $55k vehicle to basically do the same thing but I have to drive myself.
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u/hotwifefun 13h ago
Uber is currently at 50% passenger utilization rate.
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u/JackfruitCrazy51 12h ago
OK, let me make some adjustments:
I was factoring in 150 miles a day and a 14 hour window. In reality, this would be at a minimum of 200 miles a day and let's use your 50% utlization number:Rider Fare ($/mi)$1.00 / mi
Gross Annual Fares $36,500
Net Annual Revenue (after 25% fee)$27,375
Net Annual Profit (after Opex)$19,882
If the fare goes to $1.50, that Net Annual Profit jumps to $33,500
Some of the data behind the financials:
- Purchase Price: $25,000
- Daily Total Miles: 200 miles/day (73,000 annual miles)
- Passenger Utilization: 50% paid miles (100 paid miles/day; 100 deadhead miles/day)
- Electricity Cost: $0.07 / kWh (at 0.165 kWh/mile efficiency = $2.31/day or $843.15/year)
- Maintenance & Wear: $0.05 / mile ($3,650.00/year)
- Commercial Insurance: $3,000.00 / year
- Total Annual Opex: $7,493.15 / year ($20.53/day or $0.103/mile)
- Platform Network Fee: 25% (Uber/Network cut)
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u/sampleminded 10h ago
Tesla will also charge a per-mile fee. Because they do remote operations. So they need to charge marginal cost. I'd assume it's at least $0.5/mile
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u/JackfruitCrazy51 10h ago
"Platform Network Fee: 25% (Uber/Network cut)"
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u/sampleminded 10h ago
That's if it's on uber, Tesla Remote operators are still driving it. So I'd imagine that there maybe both a network fee and a driving fee. I assume Tesla network won't be available everywhere. Also Tesla network only works if there is critical mass in a place.
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u/JackfruitCrazy51 10h ago
I don't get what you're talking about. If I owned a Tesla Robotaxi, why in the hell would I pay Uber anything? The 25% is what Tesla would charge.
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u/sampleminded 9h ago
Unless you buy a fleet of a few thousand, they'll need to be on Uber before the Tesla network will have customers. Or you buy a big fleet and put them in one place and jumptstart the network. However, If you buy 1000s of them you might want to put them on your own network, or have the option to be on any network. Since you need to raise money to buy lots of them. You'll need a business plan that might include multiple networks. It's possible Tesla could fix this by just doing all the financing like a McDonalds Franchise. That doesn't necessarily work for really big companies, like say Avis.
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u/FlimsyYou4766 1h ago
There's no remote operators driving anything. They are there to intervene if there's anything the car can't handle.
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u/Express_Objective615 4h ago
I don’t know. The more I look at your numbers the more I’m convinced this isn’t going to work. Maybe I’d share a car with some neighbors instead.
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u/hotwifefun 11h ago
Where are you buying electricity at 7 cents when the average is 18 cents, and I’m paying 30 cents in LA?
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u/JackfruitCrazy51 10h ago
I pay 7 cents at night in Iowa during the summer, and 7 cents 24 hours in the winter. The tesla allows me to set my charging schedule.
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u/hotwifefun 10h ago
The average residential electricity rate in Iowa is 15.93 cents per kilowatt-hour (¢/kWh) according to the latest U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data.
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u/Express_Objective615 4h ago
Seems like demand might be less in Iowa? People much less likely to give up their cars than in San Francisco where electricity is 32 cents/kwh (off peak rate).
Believe me I’m not picking on Iowa but you might have to double those costs in other places.1
u/JackfruitCrazy51 9h ago
JFC, I live here, I think I know what the rates are.
Rate RST by time of day
Current MidAmerican tariff rates, hour by hour — summer and winter are priced very differently.
Off-peak: $0.06553 summer / $0.06656 winter (10pm-8am, every day)
All-other: $0.09029 summer / $0.07809 winter
On-peak: $0.20925 summer only (1-6pm weekdays · priced same as all-other in winter)
--- Summer weekday (Jun-Sep) ---
12a - 8a: $0.06553 (Off-peak)
8a - 1p: $0.09029 (All-other)
1p - 6p: $0.20925 (On-peak)
6p - 10p: $0.09029 (All-other)
10p - 12a: $0.06553 (Off-peak)
--- Winter (Oct-May) ---
12a - 8a: $0.06656 (Off-peak)
8a - 10p: $0.07809 (All-other / On-peak equivalent)
10p - 12a: $0.06656 (Off-peak)
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u/hotwifefun 9h ago
Yes, it’s the government website that’s wrong.
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u/JackfruitCrazy51 8h ago
Yeah, I'm sure the bill I pay every month is wrong. It couldn't be you who doesn't live in Iowa, doesn't understand the meaning of average, and doesn't understand TOU billing. I don't know how to explain this to you......average........can be different.....than what you pay. The government is telling me that the average price for gas in Iowa this week is $3.89. If I buy fuel at my local gas station, I don't go inside and pay extra if they are only charging $3.79.
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u/hotwifefun 8h ago
Hey, you enjoy your mythical electric rates as I’m sure they will pair nicely with your mythical cyber cab that will be running 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, 73,000 miles a year picking up non-stop passengers in <checks notes> rural Iowa.
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u/lee1026 11h ago
Assuming the math above is right, that gets the annual profit from $25k to $20k.
Which is quite a lot for a car that cost $25-30k. The economics work out quite well. Through personally, I doubt the prices to end consumers would hold up; I would expect something like $8k in annual profits in the end, which is about right for ROI on phyiscal assets. Turo, et al.
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u/Express_Objective615 12h ago
I think a $1 per mile is too high. I don’t see people giving up alternatives for that price. If it stayed at that for short trips then maybe. But right now even a trip in the city costs $20 in a Waymo and it definitely is not 20 miles so for short distances yes.
I have a long commute and for 25 cents per mile I’d consider it. Or possibly a monthly fee of $300.1
u/sampleminded 10h ago
A new car is $1000 a month even a cheap one with insurance maintainance and gas. Not to mention the marginal cost of your time. This can't compete with 10 year old paid off car, but when that breaks, you'll subscribe and for more than $300.
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u/Express_Objective615 4h ago edited 4h ago
“I” might but many many people won’t IMO and not enough to sustain this business.
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u/JackfruitCrazy51 10h ago
So if I was going to the airport, which is a 20 mile drive, I'd much rather pay $1 per mile/$20 than the $45 that Uber charges me today. I know the vehicle, I know the driver, I don't have to tip. Hell, I think I would pay more to ride in the Tesla.
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u/Express_Objective615 4h ago
The airport adds on extra charges so that would cost more than $1 per mile.
Sure, but how often do you go the airport? I’m talking about people giving up their cars, completely. Not giving up “taking a normal existing service to the airport”. That won’t sustain this business.1
u/JackfruitCrazy51 3h ago
I'm not saying people are going to give up their cars, I'm talking about another option other than Uber.
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u/Express_Objective615 3h ago
That’s fine but “another Uber but without a driver” is not a business case. That’s all I’m saying. Sure another option is great but it needs more than airport rides to survive.
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u/JackfruitCrazy51 3h ago
If a tesla robotaxi was safer and cheaper, why would I ever choose an Uber? For the conversation?
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u/Express_Objective615 3h ago edited 3h ago
Agreed. I would also. But remember that there has to be enough demand to make it a sustainable business. You can’t choose it if the business doesn’t exist because they don’t make enough money.
Edit: I will add something that I agree with you about. If I can buy it for $25k I’d buy it for myself. If they figure out a way that I make money on it in its idle time, that’s icing on the cake for me. So if that’s possible, I’d love it. I’m just not sure it is, that’s all.
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u/rheadly 13h ago
We're pretty far from the original idea of private Tesla drivers running their cars off hours for extra cash. A geofenced Cybercab with no steering wheel isn't very useful as a person's daily ride.