Here we go again on robotaxi, but with Uber losing 5 BILLION in 3 months, why/how is Tesla going to bring in the gazillion dollars you all think they will?
If Tesla prices their cars to the point where only Taxi companies can afford them (price + 80k per you), then only Taxi companies will buy then. I have almost zero interest in letting drunken strangers drive around in my car. So if Tesla doesn't sell a car I can buy and drive, then I won't buy one.
Tesla may make money on it, and I will be glad I own stock in it, but I will be happy to buy some other brand that allows me to just own the car and drive it. Pretty sure I am in the majority of people that will not be even considering putting their car in some robotaxi fleet. If it makes money it will be priced to the point that only corporations will be able to buy one.
It's not nearly as S3XY, but I think the Tesla Energy has some rather huge potential. Everyone uses energy and Solar/Wind + Storage is the future both from an environmental but more importantly, financial standpoint. Tesla's 2TWh will go a huge way towards stationary storage. There is also the Semi which can have a huge disruptive effect on transportation. None of that is as easy/S3Xy as just "flicking a switch and the fleet will wake up", but it has serious long term benefits and money making potential. Not convinced robofleet has the same potential in any serious time frame.
The loss was just $1.3bn but still, i agree Uber's business model does not look viable at current pricing. But this has absolutely no relation to the viability of the Robotaxi business model. It's equivalent to saying Google search will never be profitable because it costs so much to pay people to read and search through library books.
Uber is unprofitable for 3 main reasons (all on my estimated numbers):
1) At 70% utilisation rates (% of miles with passengers), drivers make around $0.7 net pay per mile (across all miles, passenger or not)
2) This still only translates to around $11 net pay per hour which isn't nearly enough so driver churn is an incredibly high 12% per month and Uber has to spend a huge amount extra per mile (maybe another $0.3-0.5 per mile) on driver incentives to keep drivers and marketing for new drivers
3) Uber does not use electric cars or cars that are designed for 0.5-1 million miles life, so operating costs are much higher.
Uber's total operating costs per mile are likely around $0.6-0.7 per mile for fuel, depreciation, insurance, car finance costs, maintenance, registration etc.
Its total driver costs are likely around $1-1.2 per mile (0.7 + 0.3-0.5), and even at this price drivers do not generally make a sustainable net pay.
In total this is $1.6-1.9 variable costs per mile vs average revenue of around $1.75 per mile ($2.5 average price per mile * 70% utilisation). On top of this Uber has data centre costs, SG&A, marketing, R&D etc which makes the company heavily unprofitable.
In contrast Tesla's robotaxi equivalent costs per mile should be around $0.2-0.25. So at the same pricing and same 70% utilisation rate as Uber Tesla cars would make around $1.5 profit per mile vs Uber at close to zero.
On top of this, Tesla Robotaxis can drive many more hours per day (because there is no driver who needs to be elsewhere for their main job/family etc). At 15 hours per day/10.5 hours with passengers (or c.90k total miles driven per year which is even matched by some taxi drivers), a single Tesla Robotaxi could make around $140k gross profit per year.
Elon's Robotaxi numbers are actually very conservative and not at all realistic for the first few years - he plugs in $1 price per mile and only 50% utilization rates. At these levels an Uber driver would make net pay of about negative $4 per hour.
Eventually Robotaxi price per mile and utilization rates will come down, but not until the entire global taxi/human ride sharing industry has been put out of business. It will take several years to get enough Robotaxis on the road to be able to do this. In the meantime it makes no sense for Tesla to charge less than the minimum $2.5 per mile price which is around the breakeven for Uber (taxi breakeven is higher because utilisation rate is lower - taxi operators have less network effects/lack the passenger driver matching algorithm).
I think the extremely attractive economics of Robotaxis is pretty much certain - this is why the industry is investing $10bn+ per year in a moonshot R&D project. The technical viability of the different strategies to achieve self driving is another question.
