Jason Calcanis of the All in Pod predicted
Tesla will land 40% of the future robotaxi market,
Uber 40%,
Waymo 15%, and everyone else splits the remaining 5%.
I go through the actual supply chain, unit economics, and hardware numbers and show why we think that split is way off — and why Tesla likely ends up capturing 99-100% of the market instead.
A whiteboard walkthrough of each of companies and the whole industry. Waymo’s lidar supply chain bottleneck (they’re converting under 10 vehicles/day), Uber’s dependence on lidar-based partners for its robotaxi hedge, Tesla’s 6 million Hardware 4 vehicles already deployed and robotaxi-ready, and why a single FSD software update changes everything overnight.
In this video:
0:00 Why I think Jason’s 40/40/15 split is wrong
0:39 Waymo’s fleet: ~4,000 vehicles and the factory bottleneck
1:51 The robotaxi-grade lidar shortage is critical
9:15 Global lidar supply tally: ~10,000 vehicles worldwide
11:07 Uber’s real margins: why only $5 of your $25 ride goes to Uber
12:37 Uber’s $10B bet across 20 AV partners — and why it’s still lidar-dependent
14:50 Uber’s Plan B: buying Cybercabs directly from Tesla
16:14 Tesla’s fleet: 6M Hardware 4 cars ready for a software flip
19:29 FSD v15 rollout timeline and the TAM math 22:38 Why we think it’s 99-100% Tesla, not a three-way split
23:52 The charging network Tesla still needs to build to support scale
26:02 Uber and Waymo’s unit economics problem at scale
We’re not saying Jason’s completely off base — Waymo, Uber, and the Chinese AV companies are real businesses with real deployments. Where we disagree is the scale math, timing, ramping, business models, the factories, the lidar supply chain, and the unit economics all point toward Tesla pulling away, not a three-way split.
What’s your read — does Waymo’s lidar bottleneck actually cap them the way we think, or is there a scaling path we’re missing?
Supply chain cap 25000-50000 Lidar robotaxi cars in ~2030.
AFTER FSD 15.X update – 6+ Million Tesla unsupervised. Today there are over 1.5 million supervised Tesla FSD.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
