Winning Robotaxis is a Multi-trillion Prize. Here is Who is Winning and Why

Robotaxi leadership should be track using total miles driven and total revenue generation. The Lidar dependent self driving car companies have to 1000X their supply of Lidar to get to dominant robotaxi businesses. There were only enough Lidar in 2021 for about twenty thousand robotaxis. Replacing current Uber would take 1 million robotaxis and 8 million dedicated compatible Lidar units.

The Argo AI failure with Ford and VW pulling the plug is big evidence that Lidar dependent self driving has a long way to go. Ford said removing the driver is over 5 years away. Most robotaxi players are dependent upon removing the driver for their business model to work enough to get to serious scale. 5+ years to get to the true starting point and 5+ years to scale translates to an 8 year lead for Tesla if Tesla solves in 2 years. Uber had a 2.5 year lead over Lyft and that meant three times the market share for Uber.