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Tesla ride-sharing program: exploring its practicality and real world benefits
Many of the Tesla faithful sat with bated breaths waiting for the Master Plan Part 2 to be published. Once it did, we devoured every word, with some words more surprising than others. Making a pickup truck, while not surprising is thought-provoking. Ride-sharing as a concept, also not very surprising. Ride-sharing using the autonomously driven car that you personally own? Now there’s something to think about.
“In cities where demand exceeds the supply of customer-owned cars, Tesla will operate its own fleet, ensuring you can always hail a ride from us no matter where you are.” – Elon Musk
Let’s consider for a moment what this might look like.
Practicality
My initial thought of an autonomous Tesla was ride-sharing within the same household. My spouse and I have jobs that are in opposite directions, but we also work different hours with him having the far shorter commute. That being said, it would technically be feasible for a car to drop me off at work and make it back home just in time to take him. Then, it would have plenty of time to come back to me before my work day is done. Driving me home would also be tight – but I think the car would make it just in time to drop me off and go grab him. (Anyone else getting wide-eyed at the thought of a car driving you around? I sure am!) The only downside that I can think of is that both of us, at times, like to run errands on a lunch break. Surely with a little planning we could just schedule who will have the car available mid day. For example, on his day the car wouldn’t come back to get me until later in the day. Should I need to use it, it could come back to me earlier. All of this sounds technically feasible but the miles would add up quickly. Over 90 miles a day, to be exact; double what we currently drive combined. This may be obvious, since the car is making each round trip twice, but on paper that distance really hits home. As for cost, our electricity use at home would clearly go up. What would go down, however, is the cost associated with having a second car. I only estimate that the Tesla costs us $50/month to power now but even if it went up to $150, that delta is far less than the savings associated with not having a second car to insure and maintain. (Let alone pay to own/lease, depending on how expensive a car you’d be giving up.)
In this regard, I see practicality as a wash. If technically feasible with your schedule as it would be with ours, it may work. Getting past the mental barrier of having only one car between two adults who drive and work full time however, may be a challenge. Tesla has shifted thinking in many ways already, so it’s possible this will as well. I keep trying to think of reasons why we need two cars but aside from our daily jobs, which a car that can drive us to negates, all I’m coming up with is the rare occasion where we both need to go somewhere different at the same time. Truth be told, I’m sure even that could be worked out in most cases. In those where it can’t? Summon up another autonomous Tesla to drive you where you need to be. Again, this comes with a cost but again, it pales in comparison to the cost to own a second car that spends over 90% of its life parked anyway.
Public Domain
Most Tesla owners I know treat their cars with extreme care. I am no exception. The thought of a stranger taking up residence in my car without me sends shivers down my spine. I guess there is only so much damage a person could do sitting in the back seat being chauffeured, presumably while staring down at their smart phone to pass the time. The after 2am crowd, on the other hand, poses additional risks but I for one wouldn’t send my car out that late. A sick passenger is one danger, sharing the road with impaired drivers in (gasp!) manual driving mode is another. How do you specify who is eligible for pick up anyway? Imagine the headline “Tesla picks up prison escapee and drives it across the state line.” Add in your fear here (underage runaway, woman in labor, very sweaty marathon runner.)
Battery expert Jeff Dahn inside the frunk of a red Model S [Source: dal.ca]
Availability
This is the main point I’ve heard brought up in my quick chats about this topic. How do you schedule your car to go off and pick people up within a strict window until you need it again? How does traffic play a part? Do you wait until you’re home for the evening and send it out, knowing full well it’ll definitely make it home by the next morning? Or do you risk letting it take a 4pm pickup when doing so could leave you stranded at the office? How far would you let your car go anyway? What about charge? You might need a certain range to get home so can you restrict your car’s pickup jobs to a certain distance? What if it’s cold outside?
In this regard, I have a lot more questions than answers. I have no interest in my car being late to bring me to or from work. It’s my car after all. I have even less interest in being picked up without enough range to get me where I’m going. I live in a major city and I don’t expect to see a Supercharger within our limits any time soon. There are now chargers within 100 miles of me in all major directions, which very easily enables long distance travel as intended. I’m happy with this, as I certainly don’t find myself needing a fast charge close to home. If I plan on letting my car work all day however, that may change. Letting it go home and plug in is impractical at the current rate of my charging setup. 29 miles per hour doesn’t speak well to quick turnaround.
Cost
All of the questions above can be overlooked for a price. The big question is what that price might be. In my own life, I wouldn’t entertain the idea if it made me $100 per month. If it made me $1,000, I’d be the first in line to sign up. Everyone has a different sensitivity to price but I’d be willing to bet that even the least price sensitive people would at least consider using their Tesla in this way if the resulting income matched or exceeded their car payment. Getting to own and drive what I consider the world’s best car for no monthly payment is an offer that’d be too hard to refuse.
Those were just arbitrary numbers though. What might be realistic? I’d like to think that tomorrow’s Tesla is comparable to today’s Uber Black. My Uber app only gives prices for Uber X but I know that Black costs more. At this very moment, a quick ride from my work place to the very center of our downtown is $12 on Uber X. Let’s estimate that it would be $20 for Black. In fact, let’s assume the average ride would net $20. The car would certainly be smart enough to try to do another pickup on the way back to me so I can probably count on $40 as a “round trip” made during my work day. If I let the car drive two round trips on Friday and Saturday nights as well as one each work day, that bring us up to 9 round trips per week, or $360. Already, this isn’t sounding so bad. Let’s scale that down due to some Tesla profit and market saturation. It still seems very reasonable that with little time commitment, $200 per week is reasonable. We’re at $860 per month. If you, like me, go out into a city once or twice a month yourself and spend anywhere from $10-30 in parking or cab rides, you could be earning/saving a combined $900 each month. I suppose I just learned that yes, I’d probably consider letting my car go out and work for me. Even at half the dollars I’m picturing, a Model 3 payment would be covered.
Convenience
Airports. Nights out drinking. Events out of town that force a one night hotel stay. Finding parking in crowded places. Paying for parking at concert or sports venues. These are some of the most popular reasons people today might use ride sharing services even if they have a car. It would sure be convenient if your own car could handle these occasions for you. This, I know, has more to do with autonomy than making the decision to allow your car to work for you. But it’s only a small leap from one to the other. I say this because if my car dropped me off at an Eagles game, I wouldn’t want it paying for parking while it waits. I’d want it headed back home, because that’s a safe place for it to wait. But if it’s going to driving alone anyway, why not pick someone up? It’ll be an exceptionally convenient life when cars can drive for us.
Implementation
How might a program like this actually work? Given a very elementary level of consideration, I imagine the same way Uber works now. I picture a beautiful and streamlined app interface on your smart phone that allows you to log in when you want the car to be able to drive. I imagine the ability to draw a border around the distance you’re willing to let your car travel, as well as the ability to set a time that the car has to return by. Many people far smarter than I will program fantastic algorithms that only allow the car to accept rides that, given traffic and other factors, will get the car back within its allowable time window. I also picture the ability to send the car out with a child’s car seat, if summoned. That would require a bit of interaction, as the app would have to notify you to install it first unless you leave one installed. Speaking of app, I imagine it would notify you that it’s about to head out. (“Mom! I’m going out for a bit. Be back in an hour!”)
Supercharger map with crowdsourced recommendations from Tesla owners
Challenges
Much like I expect to be challenging for vehicle autonomy in general, the regulatory nightmare that is a driver-less vehicle will be the biggest hurdle to jump, in my humble opinion. Those aforementioned people way smarter than I? They’ll figure out programming the self driving technology sooner than later. They’ve already done a lot. Those perhaps-not-as-smart people we elect to office? Those folks I’m not too confidant in. Well, not them per say. The big jumbled mess of a political system that in the United States and so many other places churns out rules based on the almighty dollar rather than the good of citizens. Right here in my own home town, Uber is technically not legal. It’s legal in the state, just not the city, which has a cluster of a Parking Authority that somehow controls taxis. Except, by the way, when the Democratic National Convention came to town around the same time our local train system was having problems. Then the city made a special exception to “let” Uber operate. (Spoiler alert: it operates anyway.) My point is to illustrate that all the engineering and data in the world won’t guarantee that Tesla will even be allowed to operate driver-less ride sharing services as quickly as the technology itself will be available. That to me, is challenge numero uno.
The technology itself though, still has a lot of work ahead. Just like any parent tells their teenage driver “It’s not you, it’s the other cars on the road I’m worried about.” A Tesla can be a flawless driver 100% of the time on empty roads and that still won’t even come close to accurately predicting how it will drive when sharing the roads with distracted drivers, well-meaning drivers in poor weather conditions, and anything in between. Temporary lane restrictions are hard to compute, as is seeing a car that you just know is going to make a move without a signal. Years of driving experience allows people to read another car’s “body language” so to speak. Will a car ever be able to do the same?
An extension on the both of the topics above, I can only imagine the bureaucratic and technological nightmare that will result if (when!) cars have to learn to talk to each other. Surely that’s where we are headed. It’d be safer that way. But can you see BMW, who I suspect is a little hurt right now, cooperating with Tesla? I can’t but I hope they’ll have no choice. Step up or step aside.
Production vs. demand is another potential challenge. If the ability to buy a car and have it work for you to the tune of effectively negating your payment arrives sooner than Tesla exponentially increases its output of cars, we’ll have a problem. Maybe I’m biased, but I assume a darn lot of people would jump at the chance of driving a car that pays for itself. I mean, I wasn’t wrong when I called myself crazy for assuming there would be 50-100,000 people would put in reservations for a Model 3. Well, I was wrong, but in the right direction.
What do you envision ride-sharing capability looking like? What challenges will it face? Drop me a comment.
Elon Musk
Tesla shows what Roadster drivers will see on screen before thruster activation
Tesla’s Roadster video reveals a fighter jet inspired cockpit with a 5,500 PSI thruster gauge.
Tesla has given future owners their clearest look yet at the cockpit of its next generation Roadster. In a 34 second video posted to X on Friday afternoon, the company walked through the car’s touchscreen with a caption: “Inspired by fighter jet cockpits, Roadster’s interface was designed around the pilot.”
The clip opens on a black screen with red graphics and a 3D wireframe of the car, which sits beside the Roadster’s squared off yoke. Tapping parts of the model brings up controls for the rear wing, including low drag and high downforce positions, along with a charging page with a charge limit bar and a small music player. A row of tabs along the bottom reads Home, Vehicle, Listen, Climate and Navigate.
Most of the video is spent in Track Mode. The dashboard shows a live circuit map, a list of session lap times, brake and motor temperatures, and pressure and temperature readouts for each tire. A setup page lets the driver pick Auto, Low Drag, High Downforce or Custom aero modes, adjust aero balance and brake balance, and switch stability and traction control off. Along the bottom, a status bar reads “Thruster · 5,500 PSI” next to a “Boost Ready” indicator.
That gauge ties the software to the hardware Tesla showed off near Waco, Texas on October 15. The Thrust and Rocket versions use cold gas thrusters fed by carbon overwrapped pressure vessels, and Tesla lists 0 to 60 mph times of under 0.9 seconds and under 0.59 seconds for them, as Teslarati detailed in its breakdown of the three Roadster configurations. The base Performance car relies on a fan and ground sealing system for grip, and the aero settings on screen match the active wings and suction setup covered in our look at how the Roadster generates downforce.
The Roadster layout is a departure from the rest of Tesla’s lineup. Instead of a map centered screen, the Roadster puts the car itself at the center of the home page, and Tesla’s Roadster page lists two smaller forward displays alongside the main touchscreen. Tesla has not said whether any of the Track Mode telemetry will make its way to the Model 3 Performance or other vehicles.
The interface could still change before deliveries. Elon Musk said at the event that Roadster production will begin in 2028, and Tesla says the flagship Rocket version is not approved for public road use. Reservations are open with a $50,000 payment, while Thrust is listed as a limited release and Rocket is invite only.
Those who want to see the car in person will get their first chance this weekend. The Roadster goes on display in the lobby of the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles from October 24 to 27, according to Sawyer Merritt, the first time the public will be able to view it up close.
Elon Musk
Tesla reveals Optimus Academy, where robots teach themselves
Tesla has begun building production quality Optimus robots in Fremont and revealed its training plan.
Tesla has started building Optimus on the high volume line it set up inside its Fremont factory, and the company says the robots coming off it are the first that meet the bar for a real product. “The bots coming off this line are the first production-quality bots that we have manufactured,” Tesla wrote in its third quarter shareholder letter, adding that it has “proven that the current manufacturing process for Optimus is suitable for a commercial product.”
The line sits in space that built the Model S and Model X until this spring. Tesla cleared the old vehicle line in 46 days, as Teslarati reported in July, to make room for robot production sized for one million units a year. On Wednesday’s earnings call, Elon Musk said most of the equipment for that capacity is already in Fremont, with output set to climb toward roughly 20,000 robots a week as the line ramps.
Musk described the ramp as a classic S curve. “The growth of Optimus is an S curve, but the initial curve is a shallow slope,” he said. The team is now refining the robot’s AI, electromechanical design, reliability and service life, and Musk expects that work to be finished by the end of next year, when Tesla plans to start delivering Optimus to outside companies for dangerous, repetitive and around the clock jobs.
The most interesting part of the call was how Tesla plans to teach the robots. Its cars send real driving data back to the AI team from millions of vehicles, but Optimus has no fleet like that yet. “A big difference with Optimus versus the cars is we don’t have this vast fleet of cars from which we can gather training data,” Musk said. Tesla’s answer is an Optimus Academy, where 10,000 to 20,000 robots will practice a wide range of tasks and feed what they learn into the next version of the model. Every unit off the Fremont line becomes a source of that training data.
Smarter hardware is on the way too. Tesla plans to put its AI5 chip into Optimus next year, and Musk said a new Optimus video should arrive within one or two months showing the robot completing tasks driven by AI rather than preprogrammed motions. He took aim at rival humanoid demos that only run scripted routines, saying those would not hold up in the real world.
The supply chain is lining up behind the program. In September, Tesla certified Tuopu, Joyson and Sanhua as mass production partners for Optimus components. A far larger Optimus factory is also rising at Giga Texas, where drone footage from Joe Tegtmeyer showed the steel frame nearing completion, and Musk has pegged that plant’s long term target at 10 million robots a year.
Tesla executives also said Optimus production costs are trending toward the expected manufacturing cost of Cybercab, a sign the robot is being engineered for volume from the start. The hands remain the toughest piece of the design, a point Musk also made at the X Takeover event earlier this month, as Teslarati covered at the time, and that is where much of the current engineering effort is focused.
Elon Musk
The Starship moon landing number NASA and Elon Musk can’t agree on
Musk disputes NASA estimate of 22 Starship launches for Moon landing, predicting 6 to 8.
Elon Musk is disputing a new NASA safety panel estimate of how many Starship launches it will take to put astronauts on the Moon, saying the real number will be less than half the panel’s figure.
On Thursday, NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel held its quarterly public meeting. Panel member Charlie Precourt, a former NASA astronaut, flagged the fueling process for SpaceX’s lunar lander as a major risk for Artemis IV, the mission planned to land a crew on the Moon in 2028. “We need to keep our eyes on numerous required fuelings for the lander,” Precourt said, according to Ars Technica. “I think the last estimate is around 22 flights.”
Ars Technica’s Eric Berger posted the comment on X, and Musk replied. “That’s way too high,” Musk wrote. “Actual number will be more like 6 to 8.”
The disagreement comes down to a basic problem with sending a ship as large as Starship to the Moon. Starship burns nearly all of its propellant just reaching Earth orbit, so it cannot continue on to the Moon without stopping for a refill. SpaceX’s answer is a gas station in space. First, a Starship that works as a storage tank, called a depot, is launched into orbit. Then a series of tanker Starships launch one at a time, dock with the depot and pump their leftover propellant into it. Once the depot is full, the lunar lander version of Starship launches, docks, fills up and heads for the Moon.
Every tanker trip is its own full rocket launch, which is why the count matters. More launches mean more time, more cost and more chances for something to go wrong before astronauts ever leave Earth. Berger estimated that even if SpaceX reaches twice weekly Starship launches by the end of 2027, filling a depot at the panel’s number would still take roughly three months.
How many tankers are needed depends mostly on how much propellant each one can carry to orbit and how much is lost along the way. Starship’s fuel and oxygen are stored at extremely cold temperatures, and some of it slowly boils off while waiting in orbit. More is lost in each transfer. NASA appears to be working from what Starship can lift today, while Musk’s range assumes a more capable rocket.
Musk has pushed back on higher counts before. In 2021, after a government document suggested 16 launches, he called that “extremely unlikely” and said eight tankers would be the most required.
Much of the answer depends on hardware SpaceX has not finished flying. As Teslarati noted earlier this year, the company plans to carry out the refueling process with its upgraded V3 Starship, and Precourt described Artemis IV as carrying “a large number of firsts.” He also praised NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman’s team for working to clear obstacles for both SpaceX and Blue Origin, whose Blue Moon lander does not rely on orbital refueling for its first mission.
Tesla shows what Roadster drivers will see on screen before thruster activation
Tesla reveals Optimus Academy, where robots teach themselves
