While excitement grows around AI models like DeepSeek, many overlook how close this brings large-scale robotaxi deployment. Tasha Keeney, CFA details ARK's robotaxi research in "The Brainstorm" and "Big Ideas 2025," both out now! Download Big Ideas:

Milestone day at Giga Texas! Here are a few images of the new Model Ys grouped at the Giga Texas outbound lot this morning! Is one of these yours? Exciting day to finally see so many being produced and this is just the very beginning!

Satellite direct to device: when in roam

Robotaxi in the USA - How large does the fleet need to be? (to update and reiterate) According to the Federal Highway Adminstration, drivers in the USA traveled 3.292 trillion miles over the 12 months ended November 2024. Testing Limits: What if a robotaxi network eventually becomes the lowest cost of transportation available - so low that everyone decides to stop owning/leasing vehicles (both ICE and EV) and just uses transportation as a service? How many autonomous vehicles would be needed in the USA to travel 3.292 trillion miles per year? To answer that question we need to figure out how many miles a robotaxi can travel in one year, and in order to determine that, we need to make some assumptions about vehicle utilization - because there are peak and off-peak demand periods. Using the utilization-based mileage numbers from my robotaxi model, we can see that the number of vehicles needed would range from 25 to 55 million - or just 9% to 19% of the current fleet of about 283 million vehicles in the USA. Objection: I hear you saying: "But, you fool, what about rural driving? It's going to take a very, very long time before rural driving is autonomous, if ever!" Okay, let's exclude all rural miles - which account for about 32% of all miles. Excluding rural miles, we can see that the number of vehicles needed would range from 17 to 37 million - or just 6% to 13% of the current fleet of about 283 million vehicles in the USA. Now, let's look at what could happen when transportation becomes so cheap that people decide to travel more miles - when price goes down, demand always goes up. Let's say our 3.292 trillion miles traveled rises to 5 trillion miles. In that case, we can see that the number of vehicles needed would range from 38 to 84 million - or 14% to 30% of the current fleet of about 283 million vehicles in the USA. And then if we factor out rural miles again... ...the number of vehicles needed would range from 26 to 57 million - or 9% to 20% of the current fleet of about 283 million vehicles in the USA. At some point, if the cost per mile gets low enough, then autonomous vehicles will operate in rural areas too. And, most certainly, it will encroach on short-haul air travel - why fly when you can skip security and take a nap in a robotaxi for a few hours? Conclusion: this quick analysis shows that robotaxis are an enormous long-term (20-yr) opportunity in the USA, not to mention in the rest of the world. Note: I understand that not all urban driving will become autonomous - even if it's so much cheaper - I'm just "exploring limits" here.

Refreshed Model Ys coming out of Giga Texas 🔥