The business case of their robotaxi service is simple, they aim for substantially lower costs compared to traditional taxi services and personal car ownership.
The cost per vehicle could get to something like $50k in the long-term, labor costs could get to maybe 2 people per 10 vehicles and utilization would be substantially higher compared to personally-owned cars.
The vehicles are / will be designed to last for a long time, Dolgov used 400k miles in his napkin calculation.
They can charge more because the user experience is better, so not only lower cost per mile but also higher price.
Cost of developing the technology will become negligible with scale, it's a fixed cost.
They're not just competing with other taxi services, but with all types of road transport. It's a technology that has the potential to be used by most people on the planet, daily.
Regarding surges, there are multiple ways to deal with it, for example surge pricing (which would motivate people to use the service when utilization is low) or using free capacity for delivery.
Their unit costs are at least break-even in San Francisco, and this is with their 5th gen vehicle, 6th gen is supposed to be much cheaper.
The cost per vehicle could get to something like $50k in the long-term, labor costs could get to maybe 2 people per 10 vehicles and utilization would be substantially higher compared to personally-owned cars.
The vehicles are / will be designed to last for a long time, Dolgov used 400k miles in his napkin calculation.
They can charge more because the user experience is better, so not only lower cost per mile but also higher price.
Cost of developing the technology will become negligible with scale, it's a fixed cost.
They're not just competing with other taxi services, but with all types of road transport. It's a technology that has the potential to be used by most people on the planet, daily.
Regarding surges, there are multiple ways to deal with it, for example surge pricing (which would motivate people to use the service when utilization is low) or using free capacity for delivery.
Their unit costs are at least break-even in San Francisco, and this is with their 5th gen vehicle, 6th gen is supposed to be much cheaper.