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Estimating Tesla Network earnings...

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According to Uber and Buzzfeed, Uber drivers earn about $25/hr on average.

Assuming my Model 3 is able to earn (conservatively) $10/hr for 8 hrs/day as an autonomous taxi, thats about $2,400/month. After lease and charging costs, call it $1,500/month.

What's to stop private citizens running their own 10 car fleet of Model 3's and earning $180,000/yr in profit??
 
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According to Uber and Buzzfeed, Uber drivers earn about $25/hr on average.

Assuming my Model 3 is able to earn (conservatively) $10/hr for 8 hrs/day as an autonomous taxi, thats about $2,400/month. After lease and charging costs, call it $1,500/month.

What's to stop private citizens running their own 10 car fleet of Model 3's and earning $180,000/yr in profit??

Nothing.. except you need to store, clean, and maintain and charge all those cars so it's not all profit.

Besides... There's no point building any business plans until one sees how much people will make on the network or how much the rides will be. It's anyone's guess. Remember Elon was comparing it to a bus ticket so don't get too excited about making money.
 
According to Uber and Buzzfeed, Uber drivers earn about $25/hr on average.

Assuming my Model 3 is able to earn (conservatively) $10/hr for 8 hrs/day as an autonomous taxi, thats about $2,400/month. After lease and charging costs, call it $1,500/month.

What's to stop private citizens running their own 10 car fleet of Model 3's and earning $180,000/yr in profit??

Demand?
 
The cars can park themselves on the street so no need to store. They can drive themselves to a carwash autonomously. Maintenance is included in the lease. Agreed, costs will probably come swiftly down if lots of people add their car to the network. Pretty sure car rental and taxi companies will be decimated though... how can their margin be justified if private owners can offer their own cars with no overhead?

"It's not Tesla versus Uber, it's the people versus Uber." - Elon
 
Let's have some guesses:
Other person(s) renting entire vehicle: $0.10/km or $0.16/mile

You at wheel, hailing some on YOUR ROUTE (per person!) $0.05/km or $0.08/mile

Do math.
Imagine from both perspectives.
Calculate per distance costs for own driven distance. And over lifetime of car.
- Question will come up: when to sell / shred. Take yer time on this one! Take into account TN option and expected mileages over years, take some iterations of guessing and calculate. Take at hand one liner Tesla mission statement. Question what this could mean for a (Tesla) car...
Compare ICEV vs BEV, construction vs operation.
Sell: @ what mileage? & what selling price
Shred: @ what mileage

Do this for operating as Personally Owned <-> Tesla Network Vehicle.
Question if vehicle on "exclusively personal use" is worth $s you miss by not making it part of fleet.
Make your own conclusions.

PS: Full Self Driving capability atm would only add (some / a lot of) convenience, but not a necessary feature for renting out car.
A (Any) TN car close enough to renter (1/5/10 ? minute walking distance) could work for people.
Walking = "excercise not to be done" in dull gym in evening.
 
Like Uber, TN will have to roll out in well defined service areas because they need saturation coverage to be sure customers can get a ride reasonably soon. So most vehicles market by market will start out as company owned, supplemented by owners who happen to live there.

Tesla will have complete control of the system. It's up to them how much you car works and how much it gets paid.

I'm inclined to think that one of the selling points vs Uber will be no surge pricing. Instead the list price is the Maximum price, it's a ceiling not a floor. I'd imagine Uber prices set the ceiling and TN offers all sorts of ways to get discounts and lower cost rides. Maybe some sort of TN Prime membership?

Tesla is designing this TN participation to let owner/drivers help pay for their cars so they can discourage people trying to operate commercial fleets if they they don't like that approach. I think it will initially be very profitable to run fleets and Tesla will likely keep that profit in house.

You remember way back when Travis K said he'd buy all the Model 3's if they were self driving? That was about when the rumors first circulated that Tesla might decline that and create it's own fleet management system to compete with Uber. I don't think Tesla will cut out Uber only to let anybody step in and run self driving fleets under TN unless it's on terms very favorable to Tesla.