The Robotaxi payday Tesla promised owners isn't coming

22 Sep 2026, 17:33 · The Fresno Bee

Every car starts losing value the minute you drive it off the lot. Most buyers accept that, because a car does a job and nobody expects it to pay rent.

Tesla (TSLA) spent years telling its customers a different story. The pitch was that your car would one day drive strangers around while you slept, then hand you a cut of every fare.

Plenty of owners bought in. Some paid thousands of dollars extra for self-driving software on the promise that it would turn a depreciating asset into a small business.

I understand the appeal. A car that covers its own loan payment sounds like the rare purchase that pays you back.

That promise always hinged on one question: Who owns the cars? If Tesla runs the fleet, Tesla keeps the fares. If owners supply the cars, the money gets shared.

Wall Street has now put a price on that split, and the gap is enormous.

A fresh JPMorgan Chase (JPM) forecast of Tesla’s Robotaxi business suggests the owner payday Musk promised has shrunk to a rounding error.

Musk promised Tesla owners Robotaxi income for years

At Tesla’s Autonomy Day in April 2019, Musk predicted the average Robotaxi would earn about $30,000 a year in gross profit, with owners keeping roughly 70% after Tesla’s commission, according to Fortune. He said Robotaxis could hit the road in 2020.

That date came and went. So did the next one.

“I feel very confident predicting that there will be autonomous robotaxis from Tesla next year,” Musk said in 2020, reported TechCrunch.

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On the July 2025 earnings call, he got specific about owners. Asked when privately owned cars would join the Robotaxi network, Musk said, “I’d say confidently next year. I’m not sure when next year, but confidently next year,” according to Fortune.

“Next year” is now late September 2026. Tesla’s Robotaxi service still runs on company-controlled vehicles, and owners who paid as much as $15,000 for Full Self-Driving (FSD) are still waiting.

“Not one of them can run their car as a robotaxi,” Fred Lambert wrote for Electrek.

Bloomberg / Getty Images

JPMorgan’s Robotaxi forecast leaves Tesla owners less than 2%

Tesla’s Robotaxi revenue could reach about $320 billion by 2035, according to a JPMorgan forecast flagged on X (the former Twitter) by prediction market Kalshi on Sept. 20.

That headline number grabbed attention. The split underneath it matters more if you own the car.

About $314 billion of that total comes from Tesla’s own fleet, while the owner-run “Tesla Network” contributes only about $5 billion, reported 24/7 Wall St.

In other words, the model treats Robotaxis as a capital-heavy fleet business that looks more like Alphabet’s (GOOGL) Waymo than a ride-sharing app built on other people’s cars.

Here’s how the numbers stack up:

Total Robotaxi revenue by 2035: About $320 billion (JPMorgan, via Kalshi)
Tesla-owned fleet: About $314 billion (JPMorgan, via 24/7 Wall St)
Owner-run Tesla Network: About $5 billion (JPMorgan, via 24/7 Wall St)
JPMorgan rating and price target: Neutral, $475 (JPMorgan analyst Rajat Gupta’s June 5 note, via TheStreet)

Musk’s own words line up with the bank’s model. “We expect to be vertically integrated with robotaxi as we are in the rest of our business,” Musk said on the July 22 earnings call, according to a transcript from The Motley Fool.

Vertically integrated means Tesla builds the car, writes the software, runs the app, and keeps the fare. There is no obvious slot for your Model Y in that chain.

What the Robotaxi math means for your Tesla

I ran the numbers to see how many owners that $5 billion could realistically support.

Start with the 30% commission Tesla floated in 2019. That leaves owners about $3.5 billion a year by 2035.

Musk’s 2019 pitch implied roughly $21,000 a year for each owner. Divide $3.5 billion by $21,000 and you get about 167,000 cars.

Tesla built its 10 millionth vehicle in July. In my analysis, that means roughly one Tesla in 60 would earn anything like the income Musk described, and that math is generous, because it treats revenue as if it were profit.

Owners of older cars face a second hurdle. About 4 million Teslas would need new hardware for FSD, according to JPMorgan’s June note.

The cautionary tale already exists. Dutch leasing firm MisterGreen bought more than 4,000 Teslas, betting on rising values and Robotaxi income, and its December 2025 bankruptcy left bondholders with about $40 million in losses, reported Electrek.

Tesla now courts Cybercab fleet buyers instead of car owners

On Sept. 3, Tesla posted an interest form asking businesses whether they want to buy Cybercab fleets or build “mobility hubs and infrastructure,” reported TechCrunch.

That is a different customer from the one Musk courted in 2019. A fleet buyer brings capital, takes the depreciation risk, and negotiates as a business. A driver with one Model Y brings none of that.

“Companies don’t outsource money machines. They outsource risk,” Lambert wrote for Electrek.

Tesla also controls the app, the pricing and the dispatch, so it could steer rides to its own cars first, Electrek noted.

Early rides show who sets the terms. A 2.5-mile Cybercab trip on South Congress in Austin was quoted at $12.15 with a 40- to 50-minute wait, versus $7.96 and under 10 minutes on Uber, reported Forbes.

What Tesla owners and shareholders should watch next

Tesla stock closed at $375.21 on Sept. 21. If JPMorgan’s model holds, most of the robotaxi upside flows to shareholders, while owners split a sliver.

The next checkpoint is Tesla’s third-quarter report, due in late October. Listen for any date, any fee split or any pilot for private vehicles. Silence would say plenty.

Regulators matter, too. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened audit AQ26002 into how Tesla self-certified the Cybercab, Forbes reported. That review could decide how fast Tesla’s own fleet grows.

If you own a Tesla, the practical move is to value FSD for what it does for you today. Any robotaxi check that shows up later is a bonus.

The Robotaxi money may well arrive. JPMorgan’s model says it lands in Tesla’s ledger first, and your driveway barely shows up in it.

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This story was originally published September 22, 2026 at 10:33 AM.