Tesla is all-in on its plans to take over the ride-hailing industry. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has revealed the company’s plans to compete with Uber and Lyft by using an autonomous ride-hailing fleet, which will be made up of what are described as robo-taxis. These robo-taxis will operate on the Tesla Network, which is basically a ride-hailing platform.
Robo-taxis can be essentially any Tesla vehicle with autonomous-driving functionality and by next year Tesla will have over 1 million robo-taxis on the road. To turn a Tesla into a robo-taxi, a car’s owner simply adds it to the Tesla Network platform via the company’s app. Robo-taxis will be significantly cheaper for riders than what Uber and Lyft cost today, They will offer Tesla owners the opportunity of making upward of $30,000 per year, even after Tesla takes 25 percent to 35 percent of each rider’s fee.
Not all of the cars will be owned by individual customers. Tesla recently rolled out a new leasing structure for its Model 3 where customers can lease a car — but they won’t have the option to buy it once the lease is up. Tesla said it plans to use those vehicles in its ride-hailing network.
Musk says the fundamental message that consumers should be taking today is that it is financially insane to buy anything other than a Tesla. Riders will be able to summon a robo-taxi via the same Tesla app — similarly to how they call for an Uber or Lyft today. The key difference, of course, is that there won’t be a driver in the car.
Musk acknowledged the regulatory limitations and that not all regions will openly approve the company’s futuristic tech right away. Still, Tesla’s CEO said he’s “very confident” in predicting the launch of the robo-taxi program by next year in certain parts of the US.
Musk also predicted rides via robo-taxis will cost significantly less. The average cost for a trip from a ride-hailing service today is about $2 to $3 per mile, he said, whereas Tesla’s program will likely come out to be less than $0.18 a mile. For Tesla owners, there’s significant money to be made as well. A single robo-taxi could provide about $30,000 worth of profits per year and more than a couple hundred thousand dollars over the lifespan of the vehicle. If Tesla were able to deliver customers $30,000 a year on a roughly $40,000 vehicle, of course it would be amazing.
Growing timelines in automated vehicles isn’t a problem that’s exclusive to Tesla. If you look at what has been announced in the industry to date and the timelines, you can see that there’s a lot of optimism, and then reality comes in. Some companies have announced very aggressive time scales that have lengthened over the last few years and shown that it’s a difficult problem.
The PAVE Campaign, an automated vehicle industry group, warned that promises of “fully autonomous” and “driverless” vehicles can make people think their cars have more automatic capabilities than they actually do, thus putting drivers at risk. Time will tell. My money is on fully autonomous cars, sooner rather than later.
What do you call a used Tesla car salesman?A cardealologist