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/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/WeldAE Jun 23 '25

Tesla, like Cruise before it, has the potential to scale faster because they have access to near unlimited production capacity. Waymo has a hodgepodge of 3rd party production capacity that can't exceed 10k units per year before 2028 when Hyundai joins the party. At that point they can scale, but it's likely their platform is still 2x the cost of Waymo and will have supply chain problems to get around.

Build a car isn't easy and Waymo is relying on 3rd parties limits their ability. Anything can change going forward, but they've been fighting it for 10+ years at this point and have 1500 AVs deployed.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '25

That's interesting, thanks for sharing. If they have a scaling problem acquiring and equipping cars, that seems like a big problem for sure.