I still don't see the robotaxi profits everyone assumes will be there. Heck I am not sure if Tesla is even first to making a billion in revenue from robotaxis. Just like with optimus being much fanfare and then all of a sudden openai has a hominoid robot doing same stuff I think robotaxis will be the same and you'll quickly get to a near perfect economic condition, a tiny profit. I think anyone modeling anything other than a basic economic profit, well eyes wide open.
As a shareholder I’d love to hear a good counter argument but I’m right with you.
Totally different.
With the first half, no argument. On the second, it is not obvious that Tesla has a global advantage over, say, Toyota, which is present in significant numbers absolutely everywhere, even though in most of them they are not collecting data. Tesla has that advantage in every country they have operating fleets and have legal right to use the data. Those legal rights vary greatly by country. Because of legal data restrictions exist in China, EU and elsewhere, the training data is not so obviously accessible.
Well you are modeling so the good news there is that when something goes off kilter you can look and see why. I would say that most Uber profits are in just a few cities. Really less than 20. Actually I meant revenues but lets assume a relationship. Waymo will be there by the time Tesla is doing robotaxis. I'll go out and say I think Waymo will make a billion in Robotaxi profit before Tesla.I model much more conservatively than most here. Like that James Douma rough outline posted above, my modeling has about HALF the revenues and profits he is predicting, I think he's being too optimistic, but even at half the profits are staggering. And honestly I'm probably modeling too pessimistic, as I often tend to do.
With regards to someone else doing Robotaxis better than Tesla, there is one key differentiator for this new market that will be TaaS (Transportation As A Service), and that is FSD. No one else has anything even close to autonomy like Tesla does right now. The driving data is very important, if you combine ALL the driving data from other businesses trying to copy Tesla FSD, even combined they only have a fraction of the data Tesla does. More importantly they currently have no means or plan to bridge that data gap. Tesla's lead on autonomy is an enormous moat built over many years that can not be attacked anytime soon, and the size of the Tesla car fleet is the foundation of that moat. Without that fleet it's nigh impossible to challenge Tesla FSD.
With humanoids, which are much easier to do than Robotaxis, I agree Tesla will have lots of viable competition. The humanoid market will still be large enough to allow anyone with a good one to flourish, so Tesla will still do extremely well with Optimus. However, with Robotaxis, there is no pending viable competition for Tesla, it simply doesn't exist nor is it anywhere close to existing. Once Tesla solves FSD they will own this new Robotaxi market for a very long time to come, and the only way anyone else will be able to compete soon is to build their own FSD compatible EV's and license Tesla FSD. There won't be another option.
Game over man, game over!
WRONG, here is a link to one study, "On average, owners of the Nissan Leaf battery-electric car cover 629 miles a month, while those who drive the Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car go 60 percent further, logging 1,012 miles." The second link found that 82% of the Volt's total miles were all electric. Chevy Volt Owners Drive More Electric Miles Than Nissan Leaf Drivers: Why? or Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf go nearly the same all-electric miles a year - Autoblog
???????Then what????
Widespread robotaxi, Waymo etc has the potential to remake cities for the better, IF cities are smart and subsidize pooled rides like how they subsidize inefficient buses currently, AND if they take advantage of the reduction in traffic and car ownership before induced demand catches up.
Yes legal and business modeling is huge. Many of the posters here act as if Waymo was not already deploying in the USA in the most profitable Uber markets. Or that Geely isn't hiring in the USA to support . Or that Tesla has begun working with the CA DMV on a multi year process to get licensed and approved to have robotaxis on the road.
There is no indication that Waymo has figured out how to make any profit at all.
The people who think car ownership will end are on the opposite end of the extreme of those that think there's no market for robo-taxi. Like most things in the world, the truth is in the middle. There's a market in big cities and it would generate a ton of revenue, but in the US, people will still own cars, especially outside of large cities.
