With Musk's intervention, taxi fares are slashed by 84%. Robotaxi is going to revolutionize Uber's business.

Musk has issued another bold statement: By the end of this year, Tesla's Robotaxi will cover half of the U.S. population.

Many people's first reaction is: Is he just making empty promises again?

However, a netizen conducted a real - world test in Austin, Texas, and the results quickly went viral. He hailed Tesla Robotaxi 15 times in a row and compared the price of each ride with Uber. The results were astonishing.

In almost every single ride, Tesla won, and the margin of victory was huge.

For a medium - distance journey of nearly 9 miles, Uber charged $30.38, while Tesla only charged $9.92, a 67% discount; for a short - distance journey of less than 1 mile, Uber quoted $12.36, while Tesla only charged $1.97 - the price difference was as high as 84%.

You might think that Tesla is burning money on crazy subsidies, but the truth is the opposite: This is not a price war but a crushing victory in cost structure.

Behind every Uber ride, there are driver salaries, fuel costs, commissions, and tips; in Tesla's vision, there will be no drivers, no middlemen, and no extra profit - sharing when hailing a ride. Tesla will handle the entire process from car manufacturing, order receiving, dispatching to driving.

When technological innovation reaches a certain level, even business models like the "matching platform" may be completely uprooted.

01 Tesla Wins Big with Up to 84% Lower Prices

On August 1st, a netizen named Tsla Chan conducted an interesting test in Austin, Texas: He hailed Tesla Robotaxi 9 times and compared the price of each ride with Uber.

The conclusion was straightforward - Tesla won every time, and the average price was more than 50% lower. In the most extreme case, for a journey of nearly 9 miles, Tesla only charged $9.92, while Uber asked for as much as $30.38, a price difference of up to 67%.

The next day, he continued to test 6 new routes. This time, the price difference between Tesla and Uber widened further.

For an ultra - short journey of only 0.97 miles, Tesla charged $1.97, while Uber marked a high price of $12.36 - the price difference was as high as 84%.

At this point, you may wonder why Uber is twice as expensive or even more for the same journey. The key lies in the completely different pricing mechanisms of the two companies.

Tesla's Robotaxi initially adopted a "flat - rate" strategy: It charged a unified $4.20 for each ride, regardless of the distance.

Since July this year, Tesla has launched a "dynamic pricing" mechanism in the Austin area: It mainly charges based on the mileage, and then adjusts the price according to the journey time and real - time demand.

Even so, the overall price is still very competitive. The actual test data shows that Tesla's average price per mile is between $1 - $1.3, while Uber's average in the same area is $1.5 - $2 per mile. For example, for an 11 - mile inter - city journey, Tesla only charges $13.71, while Uber usually charges $18 - $31. The difference is obvious.

This is just a comparison of the "base price". Uber's Surge pricing mechanism automatically raises the price during peak hours, bad weather, or when the demand for rides surges, and the multiplier can reach 2 times or even higher; in addition, American passengers generally have the habit of giving drivers a 15% - 20% tip. These "hidden costs" make Uber's actual cost much higher.

More importantly, the price difference between the two is not because Tesla is subsidizing users, but because it has fundamentally restructured the cost structure of hailing a ride.

In other words, this is not a price war but a revolution in underlying costs. If Uber has achieved the limit of human efficiency in the ride - hailing business, then Tesla is truly pushing the ride - hailing business towards automation.

02 How Does Tesla's Robotaxi Achieve a Cost of Only $0.3 per Mile?

Tesla has mainly done two things to reduce the cost of hailing a ride:

1) It has directly eliminated the largest cost item - human labor;

2) It has integrated the platform, drivers, and vehicles into one, creating an automated closed - loop system.

In the cost structure of traditional ride - hailing platforms, the overall expenditure can be roughly divided into three parts: driver income, platform commission, and vehicle operating costs.

Among them, human labor is the largest cost item. According to the general industry rule, driver income usually accounts for about 70% of the ride - hailing fee. Taking Uber as an example, for a ride that charges about $2 per mile, the driver gets about $1.4, and the remaining 30% (about $0.60) goes to Uber as a platform commission.

However, the driver does not earn the full $1.4. He also needs to bear the daily operating expenses of the vehicle, including fuel costs, vehicle maintenance and upkeep, insurance fees, taxes, depreciation, and other miscellaneous costs.

According to the actual calculation of an Uber driver in the United States, this part of the cost adds up to about $0.54 per mile. That is to say, the driver's real "take - home" net income per mile is about $0.86.

The structure of this traditional model is essentially an optimized scheduling of a loose combination of "human labor + outsourced vehicles + matching platform". Its efficiency bottleneck is limited by "human beings" and "distributed operations". The platform does not own the drivers and vehicles and can only drive them through rules and incentives. It is also difficult to achieve global scheduling like a factory assembly line.

Tesla's Robotaxi model completely breaks this structure.

It uses algorithms to replace "human drivers", turns people, vehicles, and the platform into its own assets, and creates an "self - produced, self - operated, self - dispatched" automated mobility factory.

Tesla manufactures its own vehicles, develops its own FSD autonomous driving system, and operates its own platform. Algorithms replace drivers, on - vehicle local reasoning replaces remote support, and visual perception replaces lidar and high - precision maps - each layer is designed for a "minimalist closed - loop, scale - first" approach.

The effect of cost reduction is huge.

A netizen named Farzad analyzed on X that in the case of no safety drivers and remote supervision from the robot - driving center (10:1 or higher), the operating cost of a Model Y Robotaxi is about $0.60 per mile; if the supervision ratio is as high as 100:1, the cost can be reduced to $0.4 per mile.

Musk even said that after the launch of the Cybercab (with a single - vehicle price of $25,000), the ride - hailing price can even be reduced to $0.3 - $0.4 per mile.

This structural cost difference will directly translate into long - term price - suppression ability. It will not only completely destroy the business model of ride - hailing platforms but also bring huge imagination space to Tesla.

For example, Tesla Robotaxis can still charge $1 per mile as it currently does. Assuming a vehicle runs 80,000 miles a year (the average full - time driver can reach 60,000 - 80,000 miles per year), the annual income is $80,000. If the cost is calculated at $0.4 per mile, the profit per vehicle is as high as $48,000. Assuming 100,000 vehicles are deployed, the annual profit from transportation services alone will be $4.8 billion.

Don't underestimate this difference. Not long ago, at the earnings conference, Musk issued a bold statement: Tesla's Robotaxi plan will cover half of the U.S. population by the end of this year.

According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, as of the end of 2024, the total population of the United States is about 333 million. That means Tesla needs to launch its Robotaxi service in cities where 167 million people live. What does this mean? The total population of the top 15 metropolitan areas in the United States is just over 100 million.

If Musk really manages to achieve this, it will truly revolutionize the traditional ride - hailing platforms.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Crow Intelligence Talk". The author is Smart Crow. It is published by 36Kr with permission.