IMO most of the demand is from people who have never owned a car, and people without young children,
There was a theory going around a few years back "Dem young millenials don't want to own cars anymore!"
and as support folks pointed to census data showing that for the first time in generations the % of households with 0 cars had gone up a couple of percent from 2010-2015.
Well, it's 5 years later now- and it turns out what actually was going on was "dem young millenials couldn't afford cars right after the great recession but still really wanted to own them"
Because that census figure has not only gone back to where it was, the % who don't own a car is even lower than it was before the recession began now, and millennials make up a larger % of new car buyers than even the boomers do today.
As has been mentioned before- even in NYC where there's massive amounts of public transit (and honestly a pretty walkable city for any short distance), and owning a car is INSANELY expensive and impractical, still nearly half of households own one anyway.
People REALLY like owning their own car.
people too old or young to drive and people who catch inconvenient public transport because they can't afford a taxi. And the most obvious cases, people who uses, taxis, Uber and similar services.
Sure.
But those folks TODAY are already not owning a car and are using uber or whatever else is available.
And as I mentioned ALL taxis and uber cars and whatnot, combined, are only about 1% of the vehicles on US roads today.
Robotaxis can certainly replace ALL of them, and you'd still have 99% of vehicles on the road NOT being robotaxis, but instead privately owned cars.
It's also why the idea "everyone who owns a tesla will make $30,000 a year letting it be a taxi when they don't drive it" is a fantasy.
There's gonna be 20 million Teslas
per year made by or before 2030 according to Elon.
That's, in just 1 year of production, like 10x the TOTAL number of all vehicles used in the US today for taxis AND rideshare combined.
I have
zero doubt there's demand for 20 million Tesla vehicles in a year.
I have massive doubt there's demand for 20 million robotaxis a year. Or even 2 million a year.
Then there will be plenty of people who own a car, but choose to have their car drive them so they can relax or do work. In this case many families with 2 or more cars, might decide to drop down to 1 car.
Sure- I believe I specifically mentioned things like families getting rid of a 2nd or 3rd car is absolutely a likely outcome of easy, cheap, RT access.
(doubly so if post pandemic the % of work from home remains high, though that remains to be seen).
But there again those are usually older, hand-me-down type cars... not new vehicles.
This is good for Teslas mission though- it'll get more older ICE vehicles out of service faster.
I don't think we could predict the demand for cars and parking spots from horses and horse troughs, Robo-taxis are sufficiently different and economic to rewrite a lot of the rules.
I know folks like the horse->car comparison... but the last few times it came up it had to be pointed out that while cars were invented in 1886 horses remained a dominant form of transport in not just much of the rest of the world, but even in much of the US, for another HALF CENTURY.
Despite that one dude going on about the two parades in NYC separated by like 10 years, the transition was WAY slower broadly speaking.
I see progress differently to you, Tesla has a likely path to success and a rough timeline... they might be out by 6-24 months, but they have sufficient confidence and capital to begin to put some of the other building blocks in place. As long as they are right about the date within 24 months that is sufficient.
To be fair... they're already approaching 36 months late on the self-driving cross country drive prediction which was originally suppose to happen by end of 2017...
When Elon tells you don't trust any timeline he gives you for a thing he's never done before- you should probably believe him.
He'll get it done when it's done, and nobody including him knows when that actually is.
In contrast- he's built a mass produced car now- and a car factory.... when he tells you when the next one will be ready,
believe it
And indeed he's usually bettered his stated dates for stuff he's already done at least once- not just in getting it done ahead of schedule, but usually producing a better version while doing it.
So I have tremendous confidence in Berlin and Austin producing cars ahead of schedule and even better than the ones being made today.
Having RTs in the near future not so much.
We are seeing progress, they are seeing the same progress, but they know what it means, and what else they need to do.,
Maybe.
No doubt they thought that in 2016 too when they made that original cross country by 2017 prediction (then repeated it for end of 2018). And the system kept getting noticeably better over time from then too.
Then it turned out they were going down a blind alley into a local maximum.
Again it's very much to their credit they:
Recognized this
Admitted this
Decided to do a fundamental rethink/rewrite down another path
Hopefully it's the correct one this time. But they don't
know it is until they either actually get there (or hit an obvious dead end like they did previously).
But this is why a lot of investors aren't pricing RTs into their financial forecasts.
It's POSSIBLE they'll be ready in 18 months.
It's also possible they still won't be ready in 5 years.
