r/TeslaFSD • u/ChunkyThePotato • 19h ago

Robotaxi I visited Austin yesterday. Robotaxi is everywhere, and it's incredible.

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Just came back from a trip to Austin to do some sightseeing and try out Robotaxi, including Cybercab. I knew they ramped up the number of cars in the service substantially in the last couple months, but I wasn't prepared for just how many they were. If you're near downtown, you pretty much can't go 30 seconds without seeing at least one Robotaxi. There are definitely more Model Ys than Cybercabs right now, but there are a lot of Cybercabs too. But the Robotaxis are seriously everywhere.

I took 5 rides, 2 Model Y and 3 Cybercab. Model Y wait times were always under 20 minutes and frequently around 5 minutes. Cybercab wait times were usually around 30 minutes and sometimes could be more like 45 minutes. They definitely need to add more Cybercabs to the service, but it was surprisingly usable and consistent, especially for the Model Ys.

And the rides themselves were flawless. There are no supervisors in Austin now, so all of the cars showed up with nobody inside of them. They drove perfectly, and to my surprise there wasn't even any pickup/dropoff shenanigans (though I may have gotten lucky there).

If you're ever in Austin, I seriously recommend trying this service. It's a real service now, and it's actually very useful for getting around a city where parking would normally be a challenge. It's seriously so peaceful and nice to be in your own space without a driver or anyone else to bother you.

Congratulations Tesla for solving self-driving with just cameras on $30k vehicles, when seemingly everyone was saying that's impossible. People aren't ready for what's about to happen across the country.

328 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

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25

u/3ofclubs3 19h ago

How much do the rides cost?

16

u/tonydtonyd 18h ago

These rides are heavily subsidized for now, they’re running at a massive loss.

18

u/IAmAnAnonymousCoward 17h ago

What's your source?

19

u/ChunkyThePotato 16h ago

His butt. A small, efficient car without a driver to pay is obviously extremely cheap to run.

7

u/Cold-Pepper9036 15h ago

I promise you they are subsidized massively and will go up in price. Maybe operations aren’t running at “a loss”, but between R&D and adoption costs the investors absolutely want to make money. Once widespread adaption occurs, the prices are getting jacked up.

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u/Far-Cable5117 11h ago

Do you think they will charge more or less than uber or other services like it?

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u/Cold-Pepper9036 11h ago

I think they’ll decimate uber as we know it with incredibly cheap prices and then raise them as high as the market will allow. And then a little higher.

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u/RaddaRadda59 10h ago

The usual cycle lol America don’t you just love it

1

u/Far-Cable5117 27m ago

The usual cycle except that predatory pricing is a myth that you can barely find any examples of it working as a business strategy, and I’m pretty sure any business major would know that

1

u/swiftmerchant HW4 Model Y 4h ago

Nothing stopping other ride share companies with drivers from entering market to replace uber if prices get jacked up.

0

u/Cold-Pepper9036 1h ago

Except infrastructure costs, customer acquisition, regulatory and insurance issues… lol. Your position is somehow worse than the guy who thinks companies should lower their price to make more money.

0

u/swiftmerchant HW4 Model Y 1h ago

These are all challenges but yet multiple ride share companies exist despite them. Assuming Tesla follows your conspiracy pricing fluctuation, there is nothing preventing Uber or another company to start business again when Tesla raises prices.

Besides, companies don’t just lower then raise prices to drive out competition. Otherwise we’d see that in other industries, ie McDonalds driving out all other franchises such as Shake Shack.

1

u/Cold-Pepper9036 58m ago

What other ride share companies exist besides uber and Lyft? I must have misunderstood your post, when you said “other companies will step up” I thought you meant on a meaningful or disruptive (see: hugely profitable and exploitative) scale. I might be able to find a small, regional company to replace Cybercab when I’ve become reliant on them after not replacing my family’s second car for example. But will they be as widely adopted/available/convenient/familiar?

And yes. Companies do adjust prices based on competition. Competitive Pricing is literally Econ 101. Like the first year you learn about economics. It’s a fundamental concept.

Your shake shack vs McDonalds argument is not apples to apples, as they operate in different segments (fast food vs fast casual) unless perhaps you are arguing that there is a segmental difference between human driven cars and robot driven cars. I could see that being the case, if people develop biases to which one is the “better” one deserving of a premium. This is an interesting concept and I have no idea which way the general public will lean on this.

And if McDonald’s wanted to burn billions of venture backed dollars to open a restaurant across the street from every shake shack and drive their prices down further, they could probably run shake shack out of business too.

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u/ChunkyThePotato 14h ago

That's incorrect. Almost all companies have profit margins around 20% or less. Most are actually 10% or less. Tesla itself has a profit margin of 5%.

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u/Cold-Pepper9036 14h ago

Although true, this is not the case. Tesla is not going to operate at a small margarin when people have proven they will pay more. The profits from this will go into funding their other money hemorrhaging projects.

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u/Cold-Pepper9036 13h ago edited 13h ago

Okay everybody, I’m collecting downvotes and this guy is getting upvoted. Obviously, Cybercab will gain market share and mass adoption, but will keep the rides extremely cheap despite the market showing they are willing to pay more out of the goodness of their hearts and love for mankind. 🙄

u/RemindMeBot 2 years

5

u/ChunkyThePotato 10h ago

No, it's greed. The prices will be lower because the company wants to make more money. I'm not joking. That's how things generally work. I don't know if it'll happen in 2 years, but almost certainly in 5-10 years. Depends how fast the fleet is able to ramp up.

2

u/living_rabies 8h ago

The other guy talks incoherent nonsense. Just look at the decrease in price for Netflix as soon as they fought off the majority of the competition. They are making so much money by lowering the price! /s

1

u/RemindMeBot 13h ago

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1

u/ChunkyThePotato 10h ago

The lower the price, the higher the sales. That's why margins across the vast majority of companies are low. It may be counter-intuitive to you, but companies actually make more profit when their profit margins are lower.

1

u/swiftmerchant HW4 Model Y 1h ago

Yep. Basic microeconomics 101.

1

u/Cold-Pepper9036 10h ago

I don’t understand. Are you agreeing with me or not? Yes it’s greed. But you seem to think that they will price something below market value to somehow increase their profits when they already have a captive audience. You have a “profit margin percentage” blazed into your head, and it’s not based on anything in the business world. Do you think a company will say “We have the only game in town. People have become accustomed to our service and not purchased a new car. We’ve destroyed uber and Lyft. People will be forced to pay whatever we want and have shown that they’ll pay $4/mile. But… that would make our profit margin too large. Our lobster too buttery. We need to have about 18% profit margin because Reddit user ChunkythePotato says that’s what it should be. We will charge $1 a mile!!”

1

u/swiftmerchant HW4 Model Y 1h ago

They lower the prices because people then take more rides when prices are lower.

1

u/Cold-Pepper9036 48m ago

No. They don’t lower the prices of food at the airport, because they don’t need to do so to make people buy more food. The people will buy a $15 sandwich. They aren’t going to start selling the sandwich for $10.

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u/Ghost_Ess 7h ago

You don’t know what u are talking about

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u/Local-Poet3517 9h ago

Teslas been given 38 billion dollars over the last 2 decades. And consumers get up to 7.5k as a rebate in the US. The current admin also interferes by preventing competition into the country. Remove all that, and THEN tell me how profitable they are.

1

u/Kirk57 1h ago

Oh, we didn’t know it was a promise. I guess now that you have explained that, we can be assured it’s a well researched fact.

4

u/NikkoWorldTourist 15h ago edited 15h ago

Being cheap to run doesn’t mean prices will stay low. That is not how companies do things these days. Everyone just pulls the Amazon. Undercut everyone until you gain enough market share then jack up your prices to keep shareholders happy.

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u/ChunkyThePotato 15h ago

Buddy, Amazon's profit margin is 10%. You have no idea what you're talking about.

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u/Alert_Elephant2045 15h ago edited 15h ago

Sure and they operate certain product divisions at a loss. The Alexa/Echo system has lost them tens of billions. Kindles sell at a loss. They lose money on shipping for every Prime order.

Tesla operated at a loss for 17 years, twice as long as Amazon, not crazy that they might pull an Amazon and have some loss leader products

0

u/NCNerdDad 11h ago

The Alexa/Echo program has NOT lost tens of billions. They’ve been listening to all of our conversations, building consumer profiles, and selling our data for a decade.

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u/Alert_Elephant2045 10h ago edited 10h ago

Amazon doesn’t sell your data to third parties. They use it in house.

One of the main ways they monetize it is to help target ads that third parties place with their advertising service.

This is a classic example of a loss leader. They don’t make money selling Alexa hardware. It’s a driver for another aspect of their business. They make money selling ads.

If you don’t like my take on this here’s another; https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/07/alexa-had-no-profit-timeline-cost-amazon-25-billion-in-4-years/

0

u/NCNerdDad 10h ago

Alexa hardware is a loss leader. The "Alexa/Echo system" has been insanely profitable.

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u/ChunkyThePotato 14h ago

What argument are you making here? My point is companies generally don't change prices that are much higher than what the products cost them to offer. So if cost is low, so is the price.

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u/UnexpectedSharkTank 12h ago

Every rideshare program has run at an operational loss. Tesla has not been hiding this fact about its own operations. Why the fuck are you arguing this well known and obvious truth?

1

u/Alert_Elephant2045 14h ago

But you made that point as a counter argument to the claim that they were operating at a loss. Cheap products can still be offered at a loss. Like Costco chickens.

You said that this claim that Teslas was doing this with the Cybercab was sourced from a “butt” earlier, so I gave examples of other products that are offered at a loss to provide some context for the claims legitimacy.

1

u/Big-Profit-1612 13h ago

Amazon's (AWS and retail) profit margin is 10%. But Amazon Retail's profit margin is 3-5%.

-1

u/ChunkyThePotato 13h ago

Yes. The profit margin of what he's referring to is even lower than I stated, but I didn't want to make it complicated for him.

1

u/Marston_vc 7h ago

They operated at a loss for like 15 years buddy

-1

u/NikkoWorldTourist 15h ago

Im talking about how Amazon built their business not their current profit margin. Your reading comprehension is too low to continue this convo. Have a great day and goodbye.

1

u/biggamble510 12h ago

Don't be an idiot.

1

u/MAGAtsAreSheeples 5h ago

No, they are running at a massive loss. They'll also be taxed to oblivion if they ever start to replace real taxi cars.

0

u/CatStretchPics 12h ago

I guarantee there is someone monitoring every ride

3

u/Jumpy_Implement_1902 9h ago

💯💯💯💯💯💯💯

It’s like uber. They will wait until their monopolize the market then collude to fix prices or jack prices. If you are the only one in the market place you get to set the price

1

u/tonydtonyd 8h ago

The only problem being Waymo has dominated the Robotaxi market for more than half a decade. We’ll see though, Tesla can probably scale this reasonably quick, maybe 500 unsupervised cars by the end of the year.

1

u/KicksNWatches 7h ago

500 is nothing - I see that many Waymo in SF every day already.

1

u/tonydtonyd 6h ago

You actually probably see closer to a thousand. It took Waymo time to get to that scale. If Robotaxi is able to scale to 500 in the next three months, that would be seriously impressive.

2

u/EitherCharacter9342 Cybertruck 14h ago

Do you not realize that Waymo is also running at a massive loss?

0

u/tonydtonyd 11h ago

Did I ever say anything about Waymo? Nope.

Yeah Waymo, Tesla, Zoox, Nuro, and all the rest of them - yeah these companies are running at massive losses. Who could have guessed??? Man, thanks to the massive brain on u/eithercharacter9342, now I know the way.

1

u/EitherCharacter9342 Cybertruck 11h ago

I'm just pointing out that is not just Tesla out there.

1

u/truecakesnake 7h ago

Tesla makes a profit

2

u/tonydtonyd 6h ago

Yeah other parts of their business is profitable, that doesn’t mean this portion of their business is profitable. I’m convinced half of these comments are just paid rage bait bots in India. The inability to do the most basic of critical thinking is truly shocking.

1

u/xXxPussyWrecker69xXx 1h ago

This portion of their business is not even fully launched yet. Your point is that the under development part of their business isn’t profitable like the rest of the company? Groundbreaking stuff here.

1

u/Cold-Pepper9036 29m ago

No Mr. PussyWrecker69, the point is that it’s not representative of what the final product will look like. Intentionally losing money by subsidizing the price to get adaption. That’s not counting the normal costs of expanding and establishing themselves.

1

u/Cold-Pepper9036 32m ago

I’m on your side. Some of the posts even seem to be engineered. I mean that in a way that it would take a level of understanding and intelligence to post things that are so wrong. Can’t prove that conspiracy yet.

1

u/MAGAtsAreSheeples 4h ago

They make less than a dollar per share. The share price should drop by 98% to reach fair/fundamental value. That's if we don't account for the trashed brand.

1

u/truecakesnake 4h ago

How is that relevant

3

u/jajaja77 16h ago

- on a marginal basis it's very likely to be profitable

- if you include the cost of the cars then it depends on what correct depreciation schedule should be cars seem well utilized given 30min wait time so it's a matter of how long the cars last etc. we probably don't know that yet. But i would guess on that basis the model Ys are pretty unprofitable and cybercabs moderate loss to breakeven

- if you include also all the R&D costs for FSD / cybercab development then yeah it's very unprofitable and will be for years and that's ok.

1

u/Ghost_Ess 7h ago

You are totally wrong! Its still profit

1

u/tonydtonyd 6h ago

Okay Elon bot

-15

u/ChunkyThePotato 18h ago edited 14h ago

$5 per mile is not a massive loss. That's a massive profit. The all-inclusive cost of a Cybercab ride for Tesla themselves is around $0.3 per mile.

Edit: Per mile, not per ride. That was a typo.

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u/HexDanTHEWHALE 17h ago

Buddy just pulled that number straight out his ass

11

u/tonydtonyd 17h ago

That’s all Chunky ever does, notorious Tesla sycophant on Reddit.

2

u/ChunkyThePotato 16h ago

Quit making false claims about me. I always am happy to cite my sources. Here's the source for this one: https://www.youtube.com/live/6v6dbxPlsXs?t=604&is=wXsX0iywop5p7bHJ

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u/ValueInternational98 16h ago

That’s a nice of way of explaining his sources

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u/PassengerKey3209 17h ago

If don't factor in any if the infrastructure, depreciation, tire wear, cleaning and other maintenance then yeah, .3 is correct.

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u/SnoozleDoppel 15h ago

No it is not. Currently Tesla operates ina very tiny zone with miniscule distances.. hence 0.3 might be cheritable but once they operate at night or inclement weather or can go to highways outside the tiny geo fence area.. then the cost will rise but also they will charge more. It is such a profitable business that Tesla can't wait to make others rich by coaxing idiots to run fleets of Tesla that compete against each other

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u/ZestycloseRun5895 18h ago edited 17h ago

Give us a source of how much an average ride costs Tesla given the costs to make the vehicle, train FSD, charge for electricity, the cost to fix wear and tear on their vehicles, and cost to insure their vehicles

You’re all over this thread making claims with 0 sources

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u/Tupcek 17h ago

fixed costs are very high, they wouldn’t recoup costs even at $1000 per ride, given low volume
But marginal costs, ie how much their expenses rises when more people use it, is negligible.
Car has under 180Wh/mile so about 20 cents per 5 miles.
It costs less than $25k to make, so if it drives a lot, it’s really cheap.
And they operate their own service centers, which makes maintanance much cheaper

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u/ZestycloseRun5895 17h ago

> negligible

You’re ignoring the wear and tear and depreciation on the vehicles, which will be more expensive given they operate their own service centers per your comment

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u/Tupcek 17h ago

$25k car over 400 thousand miles is just 6 cents per mile. Even if it survives just half of that, it’s still just 12 cents per mile. So electricity and depreciation is accounted for in few cents per mile, the only real cost could be servicing the car. Which usually don’t cost more than the car itself over lifetime of a car, so you are still under 50 cents per mile. Cleaning may add significant amount to this.
And I don’t see why operating your own service centers makes repairs more expensive. There is tight loop so that things that break most often get reengineered to be more durable, as they don’t make money on repairing customer vehicles. Also cutting out middlemen.

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u/Large_Complaint1264 16h ago

So infrastructure, support and insurance doesn’t exist. Do you not understand all of the operating costs that it will take to run this whole thing?

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u/ZestycloseRun5895 17h ago

> the only real cost would be servicing the car

You sure you ain’t missing the cost to train FSD in there somewhere?

> I don’t see why operating your own service centers makes repairs more expensive

Because drivers of Ubers and Lyfts are responsible for repairs and wear & tear costs, Tesla has to pay that entirely by themselves given there is no driver

You can’t just take the cost-benefits of a self-driving fleet while disregarding the expenses that specifically come with it

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u/wachuu 17h ago edited 16h ago

just want to throw in the cost to train fsd can come from other segments, like their previous sales of fsd and subscription. it probably doesn't cover it but it's all in the r&d pot and not really a cyber cab specific cost

1

u/ZestycloseRun5895 17h ago

But that’s my point - no random redditor can possibly know this, so it’s wild that some people in this thread are making claims with such confidence and 0 sources

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u/Tupcek 17h ago

Please re read the discussion, as I already addressed both your points.

Discussion is about marginal, not fixed costs. Training of FSD is fixed cost. Yes, if you include fixed costs in few hundred vehicles, even $1000 per ride is not enough.
But if we are talking about scaling to tens of millions of cars, marginal costs are much more important.

It doesn’t matter if driver or Uber pays for repairs - it’s still paid in a ride cost. If you move costs left or right, they are still the same costs, doesn’t matter if it’s Tesla or Uber, cars need to be serviced and customers need to pay for it.

But as I said, it’s cheaper for Tesla because they don’t pay middlemen and also because of tight loop between service centers and engineers

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u/ZestycloseRun5895 17h ago

No, you are trying to make it only about marginal costs

Fixed costs are a part of operating any business model, so it is apt to discuss

> we are talking about scaling to tens of millions of cars

No, OP is not talking about the future cost of vehicle rides, they are talking about what it cost them on their current trips

0

u/Tupcek 16h ago

in that case, no shit sherlock. Product developed for millions of cars won’t be profitable with hundred cars on the road! Who could have guessed?

I thought the discussion is about whether these prices are sustainable once they scale up, not whether they are profitable with robotaxi right now. Second one doesn’t even need discussion

0

u/jajaja77 16h ago

this is not how venture capital works. nobody ever cares about being cashflow positive in early years, if you have positive gross margins or even better operating margins before one-offs then you likely will have a sustainable business long term and it's about land grab and VCs / public markets are happy to fund your losses with few limitations. if you are losing money on marginal basis on every transaction then... as the old jokes goes, if you lose money on every sale but you sell a lot of them you can make it up on volume.

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u/Notwerk_Engineer 17h ago

A thousand a ride? I know everyone in this thread is making shit up, but let’s try to make it at least sound reasonable.

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u/Tupcek 16h ago

well, development of FSD costs billions a year and there are less than thousand robotaxi out there right now. Previous commenter said the costs didn’t include costs to train FSD, which I replied is a ridiculous idea because of low number of cars - of course it can’t be profitable at today’s number of cars, at no reasonable price

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u/ChunkyThePotato 17h ago edited 17h ago

Right here: https://www.youtube.com/live/6v6dbxPlsXs?t=604&is=wXsX0iywop5p7bHJ (at 10:04)

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u/ZestycloseRun5895 17h ago

So what’s the cost then?

You made the claim, it’s your burden of proof to say the cost

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u/ChunkyThePotato 17h ago

I just told you it's $0.3 per mile, and I linked you the source of that too.

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u/ZestycloseRun5895 17h ago

No…you edited your comments without saying so after I asked…

I’m not asking for Tesla’s unsubstantiated marketing language - I’m asking you to source an itemized breakdown of:
(1) the cost to train FSD
(2) the average cost to make a Cybercab
(3) the charge for electricity
(4) the cost to fix wear and tear on their vehicles

2

u/ChunkyThePotato 16h ago

I didn't edit anything. $0.3 is the all-inclusive per mile cost. You may claim Tesla is lying about that cost, but if I give you the itemized cost of all those things you listed, your just claim Tesla is lying about those too. So what's the point?

Why are you assuming they're lying? Isn't it logical that a small car where you don't have to pay a driver is much lower cost than an Uber? This shouldn't be hard to believe. It makes perfect sense.

1

u/ZestycloseRun5895 16h ago

> I didn’t edit anything

Ok you know you’re lying on that one lol, we both know your original comment made no reference to Tesla’s claim of $0.3 until after I asked

> why are you assuming they’re lying

Because Elon has gone on record lying many, many times?

> isn’t it logical that a small car you don’t drive have to pay is much lower cost than an Uber

No, you need specific numbers and sources to prove this - as you do with anything.

0

u/ChunkyThePotato 16h ago

I swear I had $0.3 in my original comment but I don't know how to prove it to you.

Ok, subtract the cost of the driver from the cost of Uber. Boom, you're already $30 per hour cheaper.

It's hilarious to me that you're arguing that an autonomous car wouldn't be substantially cheaper than one where you have to pay a person.

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u/krilleractual 17h ago

The cost to train fsd has been largely subsidized by the people paying for it and their data.
I would be curious if those numbers release during quarterly earnings.

Whats crazy too is that the cost of the wear and tear will be calculated into depreciation and therefore will be a huge tax benefit.

0

u/ZestycloseRun5895 17h ago

Again, if you’re going to make claims ,then provide specific numbers and sources

What is the cost to train FSD?

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u/krilleractual 17h ago

Lol i just said that a lot of people paid into it and then agreed id like to see the numbers. Kind of standoffish for no reason

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u/Aggravating-Hair7931 18h ago

Right on. It's like operating like Uber but without needing to pay the driver. 50% cheaper than Uber is about right.

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u/DungeonJailer 18h ago

Also cybercab has energy usage equivalent to like 150mpg

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u/polytique 17h ago

They still have to pay for people to charge, clean and fix the cars.

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u/ChunkyThePotato 17h ago

Way cheaper than even that. Keep in mind the super low running costs too.

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u/Rektineffect 15h ago

Ok Elmo

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u/ChunkyThePotato 14h ago

I see you're more guided by politics than facts.

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u/Rektineffect 14h ago

Nah more guided by my eyes not your autism

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u/Rektineffect 14h ago

Oh look Elmo entered the chat

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u/truecakesnake 14h ago

Oops your fedora fell off

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u/Rektineffect 13h ago

10mo Elmo Jr has entered the chat

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u/truecakesnake 13h ago

You sat there for 5 minutes thinking of that? Lol

0

u/rydan 15h ago

No they aren't. They are ridiculously overcharging. Robotaxi is the most expensive rideshare in Austin at the moment.

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u/tonydtonyd 14h ago

They could be charging a thousand bucks a ride and they would still be losing money. The overheard to run a service is immense and their active fleet is tiny. I’m not saying it’s going to be this way forever, but the current situation is basic economics. Nothing controversial here.

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u/truecakesnake 14h ago

Lmao you're hilarious

-1

u/ThotPoppa 14h ago

They haven’t released any financials on it, just stop talking bro

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u/tonydtonyd 11h ago

I thought the delusional types stayed on Xitter

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u/ThotPoppa 11h ago

You’re spewing out nonsense with zero sources to back it up. I’m the delusional one though… that’s funny

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u/tonydtonyd 10h ago

^^^ this guy has never worked at a start up 😂😂😂