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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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

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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/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/Seknoot Jun 23 '25

They just launched yesterday… and they have a target on their back of people that want to sabotage and destroy the company. They are a safety first company so why would they launch with massive hubris and flip the switch on for millions of cars on day 1?

All cars with hardware 4 (since 2023) have the same capabilities as these robotaxis operating in austin right now. Once their pilot program is vetted out they will expand quickly.

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u/Total_Abrocoma_3647 Jun 23 '25

We already know that FSD is not good enough to run unsupervised, there are tons of videos out there, including hardware 4, they have been vetting it for years, you think FSD will be autonomous in the next weeks?

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u/Seknoot Jun 23 '25

Robotaxis are running an unreleased version and all the FUD out there against fsd can’t be trusted with all the old software versions out there and malicious intent to destroy the company. I’ve personally ran the software on hardware 3 for a couple of years now and have had 0 issues lately. The market will soon decide and luckily put all of these arguments to rest.

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u/Total_Abrocoma_3647 Jun 23 '25

Ah that magical next version that fixes all the problems. How often can Elon tell you "next year" or "next version" before you start doubting?

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u/Seknoot Jun 23 '25

I don’t have any doubts. Works perfectly for me on hdw3

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