I'm sure there's a volume discount when you order 100,000 of anything, even an S-Class. There's also the possibility of this not entirely being a cash sale.
Yeah but how much of a discount? The example in question was already assuming $50k per car which is already a tremendous discount. Even if you cut it in half again to $25k (which there's no way the price per car is that low) that's still $2.5B in cars. That's insanity.
Depends on how this is structured, if it's say 33k cars on a five year lease, renewable twice that's ~2.5B over 15 years. Also, Uber has a huge and arguably inflated market cap, so if they get this deal in exchange for stock it could be very valuable to them in the short and long term.
Uber is what you need to make an auto-driving automobile acceptable to the general public. With Uber spin, Daimler can push on the driver-less car in many markets..
Both the Tesla Model S and X are Autonomous Level 3 capable:
"The driver can fully cede control of all safety-critical functions in certain conditions. The car senses when conditions require the driver to retake control and provides a "sufficiently comfortable transition time" for the driver to do so."
Its expected their Model 3 mass market vehicle will contain the same, if not a greater level, of driving automation.
Disclaimer: I've traveled down the interstate in a friend's Model S for ~2-3 hours at a time at ~85mph in autopilot mode with no intervention required.
Especially if there is no middle-man dealer to pay. On a $100k S-Class, Invoice comes in around $93k. Some people are able to pull off sub ~88k sale prices at dealers.
I wouldn't be surprised if the wholesale (with profit) cost on a S-Class Benz is somewhere around 65-70k. I'd imagine that the cost of building an S-Class (100k retail) over a C-Class (~40k) is nominal.
Respectfully, your inference is entirely off base. Trivial research gives you the wholesale value. A slightly deeper dive gives you the manufacturer margin. Franchise laws prohibit direct sales.