With @Tesla live with unsupervised robotaxis in Austin today, no better time to dive into our robotaxi research…! I used to be asked: will autonomous driving ever work? Now, the question is: when will it come to my city? Robotaxis are already driving themselves, and within their operation zones, they’re competing head-to-head with human ride-hail. From here, it’s all about scale.

We at @ArkInvest have some thoughts on the key ingredients to scale robotaxis. A vertically integrated manufacturing line should be a huge advantage, both to reduce per mile costs, but also to scale fleets in a capital-efficient manner. Scale is needed to drive vehicle utilization rates up, which is ultimately the biggest lever for lowering the cost-per-mile of robotaxi service.

We continue to expect cost to be the biggest driver of consumer demand for robotaxi ride-hail. Consumer prices could be as low as 25 cents per mile, down from $2.00 today, but should still receive healthy support for price points ranging from $0.75 to $1.50 per mile.

And thanks to much higher utilization rates, a US fleet that is less than 10% the size of today’s vehicle install base could service nearly all urban miles. In fact, Tesla already has the production capacity to accommodate many top tier ride-hail cities (per @DMaguireARK)

Ultimately, robotaxi platforms could be worth over $30 trillion in enterprise value by 2030. The biggest risk to this forecast is whether or not automakers other than Tesla will commit to providing enough vehicles to scale robotaxi fleets in the next 5 years.