Search for "Tesla" on HN, it will come up near the top. As the second most upvoted comment rightly note "Anyone else find it odd they don't talk about the battery?". What's really funny though is that 8 YEARS later, they still don't talk about the battery !
Anyway, Tesla is a scam. The company is real, and worth maybe $50B at the very optimistic valuation - their only real business is selling cars and getting subsides directly or indirectly. The sales are falling like a rock (thanks to Elon and the competition showing up) and subsides are going away soon pretty much everywhere. They are cooked.
People pay for Uber and Lyft because they're too lazy to leave their apartment. Tesla would have to be significantly cheaper than its competitors in order to justify the front-door-tax.
I assume you mean food delivery, though. In my experience, it isn't about being lazy to leave the apartment. It's that the infrastructure where I live is so spread out that it'll be at least 30 minutes total of driving to get that meal, and that isn't accounting for cooking time. A 5 minute walk would be much more tolerable.
In every other American city besides NYC, most households have a vehicle. And besides virtually every American city save one being built for cars, you also have to keep in mind that the "most people live in urban areas" statistic counts all the people living in the suburbs around cities, e.g. people who have chosen a lifestyle literally built around car ownership.
Sure, rich people will always have enough money to afford luxuries like privacy and comfort, but most people are price sensitive and will opt for the cheapest transportation solution that delivers them where they need to go in the fastest amount of time. I would wager this will be a Waymo type autonomous taxi service but time will tell.
The other problem is that I can't haul shit in a robo-taxi. Or drive long distances. People use their vehicles for more than just transporting bodies to and from work. And if I kill my neighbor I probably can't take his body in the trunk either. I would love to know what kind of life you and the other sibling commenters are living where a taxi service encompasses the totality of your transportation needs.
Maybe not 100% of cars, but a very good chance that it will eat into owning a 3rd or 2nd car in a household.
Yes please.
As you can see in your replies, there are a lot of techies who think it will. And furthermore, Tesla's valuation can only be made sense of if Tesla investors believe Tesla robotaxis will eat whole car industry, not just the whole taxi industry.
On the other hand, if there were a way to rent any vehicle for about the same price as ownership (not that I think Musk will deliver this, but in principle someone else might), you can rent the one with the big boot once a week for shopping, the truck once every two months for a trip to the hardware store, and the tiny cheap city car for your commute.
In the U.S., something like 59% of households own two or more cars. 22% have three or more.
https://shunauto.com/article/how-many-people-have-a-car-in-a...
This notion of Americans not being able to into car ownership is divorced from reality.
And also, the same reason people don't use taxis exclusively today is because you have to plan ahead or sit around and wait for a vehicle to come get you. Who is going to want to do that, when your empty driveway could house a car that pays for itself, makes you money, and is available whenever you need it?
I also don't think that taxis will be cheaper just because there is no driver. The savings is never passed down to the customer, never has been, and never will.
People who don't have cars today already manage to get around just fine, mostly due to where they live. This won't really change anything for them.