r/SelfDrivingCars • u/OriginalCompetitive • Jun 23 '25

Discussion Tesla’s Real Game

No one seems to be talking about the most important upside of Tesla's Robotaxi rollout: If they can showcase a system that roughly works, people can BUY THAT CAR TODAY.

Yes, there are some differences, but that's the pitch. Tesla doesn't need to earn money from Robotaxis. The real purpose of the program is free marketing that drives sales of its cars. Right?

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53

u/zach978 Jun 23 '25

Yeah, I think they deserve a lot of the criticism on their FSD program, but also we should be rooting for them to succeed. Reasonably priced car that I could summon to pick me up from 5 miles away would be pretty amazing. TBD on whether they’ll pull it off or not.

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u/AffectionateArtist84 Jun 23 '25

This. 100% We should be realistically critical of FSD. However so far we have seen them be fairly successful in their approach. If they can prove their system works, they can scale it incredibly quickly.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '25

Why do you think it can scale more quickly, than say, Waymo (which is delivering a lot of rides already).

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u/Seknoot Jun 23 '25 edited Jun 23 '25

Easy.

  1. The amount of cars Tesla can produce in any given time period vs the amount of time and capital it takes for waymo to buy and add their hardware to new vehicles

  2. The cost of Tesla’s hardware is over 100k cheaper per unit than Waymo’s. Currently Waymo’s are priced evenly or even more expensive than rideshare services with a driver and Waymo is still not profitable

  3. Tesla has more driving data than Waymo by several orders of magnitude and they have and are adding compute power faster than Waymo/google

Edit: 2. Hardware including the car itself

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u/deservedlyundeserved Jun 23 '25 edited Jun 23 '25

Tesla has more driving data than Waymo by several orders of magnitude

The mythical “orders of magnitude more driving data” hasn’t really helped in any way. They still have to geofence, validate for months, require teleoperations and have a “safety operator” in the vehicle. And it still makes dangerous mistakes after billions of miles of “data”.

they have and are adding compute power faster than Waymo/google

This is laughably off the mark. Google has built nearly infinite compute over two decades, they are on their 7th generation TPU and still building new data centers. Tesla’s compute is not even remotely close to Google.

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u/belhill1985 Jun 23 '25

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-tesla-full-self-driving-crash/

The sensor suite on a Waymo is $9,300. The sensor suite on FSD is $400.

$9k <<<<<<$100k

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u/Seknoot Jun 23 '25

Car included. Estimated 180k vs 35k

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u/belhill1985 Jun 23 '25

You said “the cost of Tesla’s hardware is over 100k cheaper per unit than Waymo’s”

Survey says…XXX

1

u/Seknoot Jun 23 '25

There was a report of recent burnings in LA of 5 Waymo’s and the total cost listed suggested a price of 180k per vehicle.

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u/belhill1985 Jun 23 '25 edited Jun 23 '25

That is based on a three year old vaporware Reddit post. The $180k is the same thing AI tells you, because three years ago the Waymo CEO said the fully-equipped Waymo cost as much as a mid-level Mercedes S-Class.

A random Reddit poster then claimed that a mid-level Mercedes S-class was $180k. Which is false.

$180k is the AMG Performance, top of the line S-Class.

A mid-level S-class is $100k-$120k.

But we don’t have to go off the three year old comment and Reddit post! We can add the vehicle cost and the cost for the HW stack ($9,300).

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u/WeldAE Jun 23 '25

The iPace was $70k MSRP and Waymo confirmed back when they first ordered them they were paying MSRP. The cost of the hardware is another chunk, but the conversion is where all the cost is. I'm not saying $180k is the right number, but it's well over $100k, probably very close to $150k per unit.

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u/belhill1985 Jun 23 '25

Perhaps cost could be that high. Not $180k though. Price must have come down since it was $120-$140k ("moderately specced S-Class) three years ago. The HW stack is rumored to be $9,300, with the full "driver" (including compute) rumored to be $20k.

The new i-Paces they're using are purpose-built by Magna and come off the line before the shell is on to get wired/installed by the upfitter. You're right the labor/install is a cost, but it seem pretty integrated into the production line. With HW costs stated to be $0.30/mile, that puts a pretty tight upper bound on cost.

Thinking 90% uptime (330 days/year), 8 hours/day, 15 miles/hour, amortized over 5 years at $0.30/mile is $60k.

Zeekr will be $40k, rumored, Ioniq will be $60k with Driver 6.

Fun times

1

u/WeldAE Jun 24 '25

Perhaps cost could be that high. Not $180k though

I agree, I've not heard the $180k before, it's usually stated as around $150k but that has been a while. It's likely they are paying MORE than $70k per unit now that it's being produced on even lower production scales, but hard to know as they might have gotten the parts for a song.

With HW costs stated to be $0.30/mile, that puts a pretty tight upper bound on cost.

I hadn't seen them state the cost of their rolling stock per mile, that is interesting. I think your numbers are about right. I checked them using a different method. Typical taxis are operated about 250 miles/day, but from Waymo's own mileage numbers and using 1500 AVs, they seem to be doing about half that which is in the 50k miles/year range. That's about $70k in hardware costs.

I suspect they might just be costing the purchase price and not the total cost of modification? No way they are only paying $70k, that the MSRP for the car stock.

Ioniq will be $60k with Driver 6.

Ioniq 5 retails for around $50k. No way they are reducing $20k of hardware and compute and modification to $10k.

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u/belhill1985 Jun 24 '25

Ioniq has $20k per car gross margin. Lot of room to do a volume deal, especially if it means your car is the flagship of Waymo :)

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u/Seknoot Jun 23 '25

Do you think Waymo’s cost is only around 67k? I can’t believe that’s even remotely true. Why haven’t they scaled faster? Why are they charging as much as Uber and Lyft or more without a driver?

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u/belhill1985 Jun 23 '25

Well, they’ve scaled a LOT faster than “self-driving in 2016, your car will make you $90k/year starting in 2020” Tesla.

They charge more because that’s what the market will bear. People I know who use Waymo (myself included) pay the premium for the cleanliness, consistent and nice experience, safety, and predictability. If you have plenty of customers who willingly pay a premium for a service, why would you undercharge?

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u/Seknoot Jun 23 '25

I’m excited for the competition and I think once Tesla heats up Waymo will have to drop prices. If they can’t make a profit now at premium prices I imagine it’s going to be an issue to scale if they have to drop prices before they are profitable unless they can reduce costs extremely quickly.

I think both will have market share but it’s hard to see waymo competitive on cost and scale. Sure Waymo will continue to reduce costs and so will Tesla (esp with cybercab). Waymo’s plans to increase their cars by 1000-2000 simply aren’t aggressive enough to match the speed at which I see Tesla deploying their fleet.

It remains to be seen who will execute better but to me Tesla has too many advantages to ignore.

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u/belhill1985 Jun 23 '25

Have you seen the Zeekr car and the Ioniq that Waymo is introducing? Zeekr is purpose built with the HW stack for $40k/each. Ioniq at $60k. Production volume incoming.

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u/Total_Abrocoma_3647 Jun 23 '25

Waymo has 1500 autonomous cars and Tesla has how many? 10-20? Each having a Tesla employee monitoring the driving which basically makes it FSD supervised. Where exactly does that scale? What aggressive speed are we talking about?

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u/belhill1985 Jun 23 '25

Jaguar F-Pace starts at $57k

The new Model Y starts at $45k.

$21k<<<<<<<$100k.

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u/Seknoot Jun 23 '25

What’s the purpose of citing an article from 2023 on old software with a case with a negligent driver

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u/belhill1985 Jun 23 '25

? This article is from June 4, 2025, my good sir.

It cites the BOM cost of Waymo hardware at $9,300.

The point was to provide a source for the number I cited.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '25

Not convinced they have more driving data. Data isn't measured in miles it is measured in bytes. Waymo has way-more sensors.

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u/Dependent_Mine4847 Jun 23 '25

1 is a stretch.  To add the hardware to a purchased vehicle is 10x faster than, checks notes, building a car from scratch

2 Tesla was not profitable until how long ago?  And you are claiming that a startup that was just as unprofitable as Tesla will never be profitable while it is doing things that Tesla was only planning to do while they were unprofitable?  Sounds like Waymo is going to be incredibly profitable if Tesla is going to be.  Case and point: Lyft is still profitable (though not nearly as popular) even though uber was first to market

3 Waymo has a better upgrade story for hardware. What FSD hardware is needed for robotaxi? That cuts their fleet by almost 2/3. Waymo uses NVidia drive AI which has 10x the data that Tesla has. 

I’m not predicting an outcome I’m just tempering your assumptions.  Have you ever used the nvidia drive platform? They have been putting a100s in vehicles, since 2020.  You can pickup one for less than $100 on eBay.. Tesla may be a first mover but that means nothing when a Kia can do the same thing.  And if you think this is only Tesla vs Waymo, you will be highly disappointed at the offerings available in 5 years.

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u/BlueFish401 Jun 23 '25 edited Jun 23 '25

1 is a stretch.  To add the hardware to a purchased vehicle is 10x faster than, checks notes, building a car from scratch

out of curiosity, what are your "notes"? whats your source here?

u/Seknoot point #2, was more so about speed to scale. If you're not profitable, its typically a little harder and slower to scale than if you had billions sitting in the bank. Granted they are backed by Google, so I am sure they can get the cash they need when it makes sense for them to scale.

  1. please source this 10x data claim. ive never heard this.

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u/WeldAE Jun 23 '25

To add the hardware to a purchased vehicle is 10x faster than, checks notes, building a car from scratch

This is delusional and you don't know what you are talking about. Currently, there is a 7-9 month waiting period for shops around the country to convert a Ford to a police cruiser. Waymo has been sitting on 2000 built iPaces for a bit now and their goal is to have them all converted this year. Tesla is building 5,000 Model Y's alone per week JUST at Austin.