Quote:
Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist
So, I've been thinking about Musk's "Robotaxi" event.
Essentially he gave a vaguely soonish timeframe for full self driving. The big win is that customers can just buy a fleet of these things and roll in the dough. Hire it out and make bank!
I have a few questions on how this is supposed to work.
1) How will it be different than Uber? Yes there's no person in the vehicle, but will that lower the cost enough to be worth it while still being high enough to allow profit on an autonomous vehicle?
2) All Tesla's that have been sold to this point were promised to have Full Self Driving for a decade now. Is that not true anymore? We need these new gull winged monstrosities to do it? What was all that $12,000 surcharge all these people paid for then?
3) If all I need is some money to purchase a "Robotaxi", why do they need my money? Why wouldn't Tesla just do it themselves? They have infinitely more capital than I do, so what's my money needed for? I mean, they own the booking software/access, the driving/navigation software, so what does my ownership add here?
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It honestly basically seems like the idea of a timeshare for a car. It's intended to sit squarely in between Uber/Taxi and Turo/car rentals in the same way a traditional time share sits between hotels and Air Bnb.
If full purchase, then use whenever you want, then toss it back in the pool for the periods you're not interested in using for yourself.
Others can borrow for the durations they want without full commitment depending on what is available. Because the owner doesn't have to be involved directly in the lending of the vehicle, it's slightly different than Turo/Uber. But I also assume that due to the minimum standard of tech/lack f human that would be required in each Tesla for this to work, it offers a something slightly different than the other options in a way that would be hard for those options to encroach upon?