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by nradov 359 days ago
The Tesla robotaxi service might fail for a variety of reasons but I'm not convinced that this is one of them. Turo has already somewhat proven the business model of private owners renting out their cars. You can find occasional horror stories of cars being destroyed, but car owners keep using the service.
1 comments

Turo is a pretty different product than ridesharing. Much closer to traditional rental cars than robotaxis.

For fun, I went to Turo's site to see the shortest interval I could rent - looks like 1 hour. Prices are day-based, like rental cars, and thus are pretty expensive vs what you'd expect to pay for a rideshare. They have very different use cases.

The liability questions are clearer for Turo - you are renting the vehicle to someone for a set period of time and they're responsible for the operation and condition of the vehicle while it's in their possession. That looks completely different in the context of a rideshare customer. The customer is not in control of the vehicle. The customer is only accountable for their own actions.

A robotaxi is going to do rideshare-like behaviors. It will be picking people up and dropping them off from popular spots, and doing it often. A rented car from Turo or anywhere else will have different patterns of usage, many of which will look pretty similar to someone just going about their day. This means robotaxis are easier to identify and target.

IMO they don't look much alike at all.