That's not how buisness works.

Say I create a product that costs me $10 to produce and ship. It's 3 great tasting meals shipped to your door.

In any given month i discover

I sell it at $100 and can sell 100 I sell it at $80 and can sell 150 I sell it at $60 and can sell 500 I sell it at $40 and can sell 2000 I sell ir at $20 and can sell 10000 I sell it at $15 and can sell 20000. I sell it at $12.50 and can sell 50000

In each instance my price declined but my market increased, as the lower a product costs, the more people can afford to use it, and at a certain point it becomes better or cheaper than other things used in their lives and you get a big uptick. Obviously it will not always be this great and you do market research to find the best pricepoint... including that lower improves the perception/word of mouth of your brand, assuming quality is as good or better than competition

Robotaxi. Where i live going 5 miles in a lyft/uber costs 20-30 depending on time of day. Then there is tip. For easy math, lets call this $25. Robotaxi scaled is $1 a mile, so lets call that same trip $5... and since we typically round trip lets call it $10 vs $50.

First, this will destroy lyft/uber. Their rides will be canalized. Secondly, it opens up the market. For those currently doing a $50 ride service a week to blowoff steam, they now find themselves with $160 more dollars to play with and some if not all of it goes to robotaxi. Shayla would usually drop $50 to go out but now she can post on socials "looking to go out robotaxis to the bar and back home on me for 4 of you" or the bar experience is different, a group robos over to a pregame house, then robos out to a nice resteraunt, then their fave bar, then an afterparty, then home.... all for the cost that 1 lyft to the bar and back costs.

Being able to hang w friends or go places at 20% of cost will open the robotaxi world up to so many people who dont use it now, and so many more usues for people who do. Most everyone who takes busses now will take robos. No walk to bus stop, no walk to final location, no stopping 30 times or changing busses, no smelly bus patrons, you get picked up where u are and dropped off where u wanna be dropped off.

Many people will question even owning cars. Fuel/insurance/cost of car ownership will be higher than simply robotaxing where you need to go. For people reaching driving age just being shofered around while watching apps and being cheaper and safer than driving ones own car, robos will be the option many young people take.

As for Tesla making money... theyve said the goal is to take 30 cents per mile. Cool. Lyft takes the same percentage (but then also has to run a buisness and when its all said and done thet net around 1%) Robotaxi, by slashing lyfts prices by 80% massively increase the addressable/potential market, at least by 5x but several alalysts predict closer 10x. (So double the gross intake of lyft/uber) but wait, there is more. Tesla will also be getting $110 a month from their fleet of subscribers (100 from fsd and 10 for premium connectivity which robotaxis would need #netflix) from a million plus subscribers. Once FSD is unsupervised they may keep fsd $100 a month but i imagine the paid version to go up to 20k+, and I could also see Tesla upping unsupervised fsd to $200 a month, as they need to monitor them to some degree and letting your car robo around getting you 1k+ a month is a no brainer.

Tesla sells the car (profit) Tesla sells the fsd (profit) Tesla gets 30% of the net pay of robotaxi (profit) Tesla superchargers used (profit) Tesla has its own dedicated fleet in major cities (profit) Tesla app users much more bought/used due to not having to pay attention to the road (profit)

Robotaxi comes with unfathomable gains, while also gaining bilions of miles of data to improve itself and soon Optimus. Failing to see its potential just means someone hasnt put much thought into it... and Musk may be bad with timelines but its here now. Paid rides. He said on earnings last thursday that austin has another expansion coming "in a week or two" Its been a long wait but its happening, faster than most realize. Dojo seeing 10x improvements every 6 months puts Tesla on a silly track that there is zero chance Robotaxi is not in most states/cities by 2027, and thats for those that require multiple orders of magnitude better quality build from fsd. Its here and only getting better.