Isn't the lesson from the success of TSLA, that you don't compete on price? That's what made Tesla the first successful EV. Because unlike the rest, they didn't try to compete on price and offer a mass market consumer vehicle. Instead they started with a roadster and then a luxury saloon both targeting the upper end of the market.
I don't see the point of a budget taxi car. After all even the human driven counterparts tend to be higher end luxury saloons or SUVs.
Robot Taxis will be competing on price. Whoever can release the lowest cost per mile and most reliable taxi will take lion's share simply because consumers are generally price conscious about transport. Very few will be analyzing the data if two are judged to be 'safe enough', it will come down to price.
Companies like BYD and Tesla are positioned well for that if they can get their AV functionality proven out as both are fully integrated car manufacturers.
Waymo doesn't have in-house manufacturing and is, to my knowledge, purely software so they have lots of vendors along with a relatively low output of vehicles. Their 2025 and 2026 plan is to build 2,500 new cars per year. Each Waymo car currently costs over $100k. Even if Tesla was pushing out Model Ys as their robotaxi platform, they could flood the market very easily in both scale and price per mile _if_ UFSD (unsupervised FSD) was proven.
Calculate how much a car can drive (200-400k km), then the avg cost of a car (50k vs. 100k) and the avg taxi route (5-30km).
The car itself is a price point of 10 to 40 cent pro km which has impact on the journey for sure but a lot less that it might be the reason.
if you tell me, that i can take the saver car and pay 1 euro more with a 20 euro fair, I wouldn't care.
Nonetheless, economy of scale has happened already at lidar and continues to happen.
If tesla can't get it running properly in bad weather but waymo can, they can also compensate it just by driving at situations were tesla doesn't want to drive.
But hey its just brainstorming at this point as tesla is not close enough to waymo to compare it properly. And while waymo exists, plenty of other companies exist too doing this. Nvidia itself will keep building their car platform which will level the playfield even more.
Whatever market selfdriving cars are, it will be split between everyone and no tesla will not just 'win' this. It will be a race to the bottom for everyone reducing the revenue to a commodity.
dachworker|3 months ago
madamelic|3 months ago
Companies like BYD and Tesla are positioned well for that if they can get their AV functionality proven out as both are fully integrated car manufacturers.
Waymo doesn't have in-house manufacturing and is, to my knowledge, purely software so they have lots of vendors along with a relatively low output of vehicles. Their 2025 and 2026 plan is to build 2,500 new cars per year. Each Waymo car currently costs over $100k. Even if Tesla was pushing out Model Ys as their robotaxi platform, they could flood the market very easily in both scale and price per mile _if_ UFSD (unsupervised FSD) was proven.
LorenDB|3 months ago
tverbeure|3 months ago
That aside, the cost of a Waymo is estimated to be between $150 and $200k. A model 3 based Tesla robotaxi doesn’t cost less than $20k…
Workaccount2|3 months ago
gibolt|3 months ago
4kchiefofstaff|3 months ago
The car itself is a price point of 10 to 40 cent pro km which has impact on the journey for sure but a lot less that it might be the reason.
if you tell me, that i can take the saver car and pay 1 euro more with a 20 euro fair, I wouldn't care.
Nonetheless, economy of scale has happened already at lidar and continues to happen.
If tesla can't get it running properly in bad weather but waymo can, they can also compensate it just by driving at situations were tesla doesn't want to drive.
But hey its just brainstorming at this point as tesla is not close enough to waymo to compare it properly. And while waymo exists, plenty of other companies exist too doing this. Nvidia itself will keep building their car platform which will level the playfield even more.
Whatever market selfdriving cars are, it will be split between everyone and no tesla will not just 'win' this. It will be a race to the bottom for everyone reducing the revenue to a commodity.
don_neufeld|3 months ago
Tesla is just on the wrong side of that bet.
xnx|3 months ago
Agreed. Waymo has a working self-driving vehicle that currently operates in many cities. Tesla has a buggy tech demo in a portion of Austin.
> the Tesla robotaxi vehicle is probably cost 10x less, at least.
Very unlikely. Waymo vehicles also carry twice as many people.
unknown|3 months ago
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4b11b4|3 months ago