monetizing FSD a to z

[Boomer19]

thinking about elon’s level 5 confidence over the coming year, and disregarding what city/states approve and don’t.

how do we think about this? i think much of the below is mostly conservative (maybe vehicle cost is generous?)

a frame/body 30x rolled steel autonomous transport vehicle for 1 to 6 passengers? maybe 4-12 passengers?

since local urban trips do they build them with 50kwh packs? if so the production vehicle cost around 15k to tesla? hub stations to store and maintenance them and charging is kind of a wildcard depending on city, tesla service/center presence, etc.

would the routes be predetermined stops within a given city (like bus) or is it riders exact destination choice? if bus, can they even do that or would city transportation authorities prevent such an arrangement?

most of the trips between .5 and 5 miles?

trips cost individual rider between $1-$10?

a thousand of these vehicles giving avg of 30 individual rides per day of $3 per instance is about 30k per vehicle per year.

30m revenue per 1k cars (sans cost of prod and infrastructure etc)

the point is i’m lowballing it a lot i think. and they could probably produce 10k of those types of vehicles in a jiffy, which in lowball terms is 300m rev per year

the idea being cheap rides incentivize cleaner transpiration...hence the lowballing

but 100k of those vehicles operating in cities across the world is a few b in revenue annually

now expand that to longer rides across more ground at higher cost (burbs and airports, etc), stronger demand and a few hundred k transport vehicles and even something conservative and understated like above can become a very lucrative business as it scales.

has anyone else have different points of view on this or care tinkering with the numbers ?

i know much has been said about TN but trying to imagine a simple model at the onset and then how it may progress

any thoughts appreciated

 

[Boomer19]

didn’t get any traction in regular thread.

if the whole post is dumb then that’s fine. but wanted to start a discussion either way. aside from the facts we already know as far as cost, guessing the take rate, analyst pipe dreams, etc etc.

wanted a place to discuss simple nuts and bolts.

 

[brianhn1]

I think Tesla would likely figure out that having vehicles of at least two different capacities would allow optimization of cost, utilization, and minimizing distance traveled.

Example of having two different capacity vehicles:
1. Cost per mile per seat. Tesla Van < Tesla Car.
2. Capacity. Tesla Van > Tesla Car.
3. Cost per mile per Tesla. Tesla Van > Tesla Car.
4. Cost per Tesla. Tesla Van > Tesla Car.

High density areas would likely optimize cost with having a high ratio of Tesla Vans and routine routes.

Low density areas would do the opposite.

 

[durkie]

I found Elon's response to this a bit more illuminating: https://twitter.com/comma_ai/status/1344675033231237120

Definitely more qualified and fuzzy than "Level 5 in 2021!" like his previous interview. Gonna keep waiting here. He at least seems to be realizing a bit more that "Elon time" is a thing