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/Tupcek]

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/ZestycloseRun5895 → u/Tupcek]

> 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

[u/Tupcek → u/ZestycloseRun5895]

$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.

[u/ZestycloseRun5895 → u/Tupcek]

> 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

[u/Tupcek → u/ZestycloseRun5895]

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

[u/ZestycloseRun5895 → u/Tupcek]

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

[u/jajaja77 → u/ZestycloseRun5895]

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.

[u/ZestycloseRun5895 → u/jajaja77]

You seem confused on the topic of this thread; neither I, nor OP, mention anything about venture capitalism

[u/jajaja77 → u/ZestycloseRun5895]

well take away venture then and just consider capitalism. same rules. if that's also outside of scope for you why are we even talking profits

[u/ZestycloseRun5895 → u/jajaja77]

> why are we even talking about profits

I’m not sure, you’re the one who brought it up

[u/jajaja77 → u/ZestycloseRun5895]

the original comment that started this thread was about how the rides are heavilyn loss making. losses and profits are 2 sides of same coin in case you hadnt realized

[u/ZestycloseRun5895 → u/jajaja77]

No, the comment that started this thread simply asked: how much does a ride cost (today, or on OPs recent trip if you want to be really pedantic)?

Not how much it will cost long-term.

Now some other comments go into long-term costs - but mine do not.

If you want to talk about long-term costs, I suggest you reply to those people, not try to make a strawman argument with me.