Taking advantage of the flood of fully-autonomous technologies that are to be implemented on Tesla cars possibly as soon as this year, Musk said he intends to have more than 1 million self-driving cars on the roads by the end of next year. A good portion of them could be used as part of a new ride-hailing service.
This idea is supposed to work not unlike Uber and other similar services. Customers will be able to summon their cars using a purpose-built app, get in the car and be driven to their destination. Musk says he expects the price of a ride to be 0.18 cents per mile, a lot lower than the fares of current services available.
Some of the cars used for this service will be operated by Tesla, but most will belong to its customers, who will become Tesla partners and have access to the app in exhange for a 30 percent commission.
The big difference is that there will be no driver behind the wheel of these cars. This opens up the floodgates of opportunities for Tesla owners, who could, for instance, let their car roam the city while they're at work, earning them a projected gross profit of $0.65 per mile.
As for the locations where the service will be available, there’s no word yet as a lot of regulatory hurdles stand in the way.
For now, this plan remains just an idea, one that investors did seem too excited about. According to Fortune, Tesla’s stock dropped nearly 4 percent after the investors’ meeting. Not unheard of before, but clearly a signal Musk failed to win pockets with his pitch.
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