Depends when you bought.. 6k here :P

Hopefully it's not 6k + your personal safety.

I bought FSD, but I’m really confused by the idea that it would be worth $100k when perfected. What’s the math look like on that?

Especially when, in most areas, you could literally pay a full time driver for $100k a year. Granted, I suppose your Tesla could drive for 24x7 hours a week minus charging time, but I don't think it would hold up very well in those conditions.

I really want to like Tesla, but the wacko things coming from the mouths of Musk and Tesla fanboys make it so difficult.

Yea. I <3 my Model 3, I have a reservation in for a CyberTruck, but the idea that a completed FSD is valued at $100k is almost as crazy as the idea that we’ll see a completed FSD within the next decade.

Probably some optimistic estimates involving being able to send your car out to make money by doing self-driving Uber while you aren't using it.

because all Uber passengers are good honest people and will surely not take advantage of an unmanned vehicle

There's a bunch of if/then statements that you have to fall into.

This is from 2019, and they say a robotaxi could make an owner around $30k in a year.

https://medium.com/swlh/30-000-from-a-tesla-robotaxi-not-as-...

What, those robotaxis that would "for sure" happen by the end of 2020 but somehow, mysteriously, didn't:

https://www.thedrive.com/news/38129/elon-musk-promised-1-mil...

How many units of belief do you have left in the true believer tank?

As a rule, I don’t trust vendor estimates for amount of savings/revenue their product will cause :D

There are multiple ways to arrive at that.

Here's one version of the napkin math.

According to AAA average cost of owning a car in US is $8k per year.

Average driving in US is 12k miles per year.

A $25k robotaxi with 1 million mile battery can provide the service for 10 cents per mile.

That's $8k of value delivered for $1.2k. Let's round it up: $8k - $2k is $6k of profit per year.

This is to replace a single car which is, on average, 2 hours of driving per year.

So assume 8 hours of "paid" driving gives us $6 * 4 = $24 k of profit per year.

You can plug your own assumptions. I think those are pretty conservative but let's round it down to $10k a year profit.

At 10 years per car that's $100k profit from FSD software.

So I think the confusion to my mind is the following:

1. I didn’t buy my car to have it drive around on its own working a day job

2. I don’t want to absorb the insurance / maintenance hit of having my car be a road warrior while I’m working

3. My Tesla cost closer to $50k than $25k

4. I do not live in an area where taxis are a major mode of transport

I’m sure there are people in the world that could get $100k of value out of a robotaxi. But I don’t think they’re the median or mean purchaser of a self-driving car.

The market value would still go up under this fantasy scenario that was actually sold to people, whether you value it personally or not.

Missing from the calculation: increased maintenance cost from doing the additional miles, damage to the car from luggage and extra (ab)use, repairs after accidents (300-500 per million miles), personal costs from the car not coming back to you when you need it. Reminds me of people getting into Uber driving underestimating the extra costs incurred.

> Reminds me of people getting into Uber driving underestimating the extra costs incurred.

I thought that was the bulk of their target market - people who don't really do the math on vehicle depreciation and such.

I know people who make money doing it, but they're driving very cheap to run cars, and are pretty careful about how they do it, and are spreadsheet-heavy on proving it.

Does any other company exist in this world?

This is a per-car math.

It doesn't have to be a Tesla car.

The math works just as well for Ford robotaxi or Waymo robotaxi.

This is like joining an MLM. Let’s assume the math holds: anybody can buy a car and make $100k in profit over 10 years. So you buy one… except it turns out that since anybody can do it, enough other people do it to drive up supply. So prices drop and you’re getting fewer rides for less money than your original equation.

The only way this doesn’t happen is if robotaxis cost more to buy or operate than it’s worth for the average person to do so.

The obvious future is that robotaxi network will be operated by the company that makes the software, not individuals.

Be it Tesla or Waymo or GM.

So unless you can develop your own FSD software and build millions of cars cheaply, you won't be competing with a robotaxi network.

And they won't be selling you robotaxi software at any price.

And if someone does develop FSD software and sells it to individuals, there's still the issue of competing with a network. You won't compete with Uber even if you build similar iPhone and Android apps. The size of the network matters.

There might (or might not) be a transitory period when this software is sold to individuals and there's a rev share agreement.

Musk mused about such scheme but he also hinted that this is not going to last forever.

This is simply a financing and cash flow decision of the CFO.

If Tesla goes unprofitable and cash flow negative, the wall street might loose their minds even if this money is simply an investment into robotaxis that might return 10x in the future.

A simple way to fund robotaxi network without going negative cash flow is the sell the car and the software for, say $20k, and then do 30-70% revshare on the $100k of profit (i.e. $30k for Tesla, 70k to car owner, which would end up with 50k profit to Tesla and 50k profit to the owner while keeping Tesla profitable on a quarterly basis).

But eventually Tesla will want all of the $100k profit and will be making more than enough to pay for the cars upfront.

At such time they'll stop selling FSD and cars altogether and go exclusively robotaxi.

The logic doesn't change for GM or Waymo.

It seems we’ve gone back to where we started. I said I didn’t see how my car would be worth $100k with complete FSD, you gave an equation claiming it would be, and now we’ve looped to you agreeing that it won’t be?

SpaceX, I assume.

I doubt there will ever be much profit in this from individual car owners, even if it comes to pass. As soon as robotaxis can exist en masse the market will be flooded by sub-$30k dedicated platforms; boxes with wheels and batteries.

> worth $100k or more per car when perfected

I think the burden of proof would be on you for this to be a "when" rather than an "if"