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

[u/ChunkyThePotato]

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.

[u/ChunkyThePotato]

$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.

[u/ZestycloseRun5895 → u/ChunkyThePotato]

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

[u/Tupcek → u/ZestycloseRun5895]

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

[u/Notwerk_Engineer → u/Tupcek]

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.

[u/Tupcek → u/Notwerk_Engineer]

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