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Comment by snoshy | Hacker News Reader

I disagree, largely because you've cherry-picked parts of the overall strategy. The world is obviously not going to go from purely human driven to 100% autonomous overnight. There will be an intermediate phase where initially some few cars will be autonomous and privately owned, and for those owners making use of the car's full lifetime to serve as a taxi would be a no-brainer. It could pay off your (very expensive) Tesla in the matter of a year or two.

After the market for on-demand autonomous taxis is oversaturated, Tesla's plan is actually to stop selling vehicles altogether, or reduce it drastically. Musk has said that FSD vehicles will likely not be for sale after this point, so the "consumer-operated robotaxi" is inherently an intermediate solution.

Vehicle ownership will drastically change in nature after the advent of AVs. Tesla isn't going to be unique to having to adapt to this.

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> It could pay off your (very expensive) Tesla in the matter of a year or two.

.. while lota of people unknown to you sit with their butt in your precious expensive car. People who themselves can't (or want to) afford such a car.

Not gonna happen. Nobody will throw that much money behind such an expensive gadget, being happ about their precious toy and then let complete strangers user it most of the time.

Do you rent out your home via Airbnb when you are 2 weeks on vacation? Very few people actually do that.

There would have to be a cleaning service after every (n?) ride and ideally some form of (expensive) insurance. Unless there is some high level of surveillance of the driver with a rating system which in itself is a huge drawback.

I agree this whole thing (ie a large percentage giving up ownership) is way more complicated than it sounds.

At that point it will be just another smart investment and not a “shiny toy”.

Ok but then you are not renting out your car that you are really normally using yourself, but are participating in a taxi scheme. That's ok, but let's be honest about it. And why stop at one car? Keep investing, soon enough you'll have 10 cars on the streets raking in money for you. Similar with Airbnb which is more a professionalized hotel business platform than renting out your place while you are on vacation.

Correct. It’s more like a bring-your-own-car ride sharing (which already exists here, SnappCar) but a lot nicer in all aspects.

They estimate covering the cost of the car in 1-2 years, so you won’t be expanding your fleet that fast... there is a lot of discussion about this online, a lot of comments here cover that too. It’s just a step, eventually they won’t sell cars to consumers anymore.

I could just about believe that this could be a novel kind of finance - someone who couldn't afford to buy a fancy car for themselves could afford it if they offset the cost by renting it out. You accept the butts as part of the cost.

The entire point of Airbnb was to let people rent out their spare housing capacity - it just became so wildly successful that people used the system to become pseudo-landlords.

My car sits idle 22 out of 24 hours a day. If someone else handled the insurance issues and found drivers willing to pay to use it outside of the times I utilize it, I'd have no qualms about lending it out for an appropriate price. The low end estimate for an Uber driver after expenses and Uber's cut is $8.55/hr. If my car averages half that it's $35k/yr that I don't need to do anything for.

Yes you do. You will need to share your car with strangers. Some morning you will open the door, see an oily stain from a thai takeaway lunch in the driver's seat and the last 3 people who rented the car will all claim it wasn't them.

Have the car drive to a cleaning station between rides.

But really, for $35,000, I would not mind investing in a $300 seat cover.

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