You are claiming thay current human driven taxi/ car rides market are making 700 billion dollar profit per year (70B / 10%)
They don’t
They don’t
The cost of operating the current car fleet is way higher than $700B. Buying the cars alone is higher. There are 70M new cars on the road each year. At $10,000 per car, that would already be $700B.
What is the difference in utility of a robotaxi and a meat taxi besides maybe a reduction in cost per ride (how much is labor vs. non-labor cost), and why isn't everyone using Uber to get everywhere now?
The robotaxi vehicle still needs to be manufactured, purchased, financed, maintained, fueled, insured, with room for profit for the robotaxi company. None of these things are free.
Automation and economies of scale (maintenance, repair, cleaning, charging) will also contribute to the lower cost of a robotaxi fleet compared to privately owned cars.
It is way cheaper because majority of Uber cost is the driver.
Safety: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38456847
It is more convenient because it has more space. No drivers seat, steering wheel etc.
Robot driver or not, basic financials and operational constraints still apply. They can only be ignored for quite a while if a company has endless VC money, unit economics ultimately catch up so, always.
I think you’re overestimating how many people will buy Teslas.
Also, how many people who own Teslas would robotaxi it. A company might do it as a business, but it’d just take waking up one morning to discover a drunk passenger puked all over your back seat, or fluid remains of someone having sex in there [1] for individual owners to pull out of the program.
[1] https://sfstandard.com/2023/08/11/san-francisco-robotaxi-cru...
That is only true because Uber doesn't have to pay for buying and maintaining the cars in their 'fleet', having offloaded that cost to their drivers. If Uber were to move to owning robotaxis then they have to have to move the car ownership costs back onto their books.
When you take the driver out of the equation, the cost of providing rides plummets massively.
But sure, as long as other take all the costs and most of risks away from the new liberatrian tech nobility we are suppossed to not care about those little things, right?