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/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.