Asheville, NC
RequestedThis is a planning tool, not a prediction. Of the 78 numbers behind a season in Asheville, 30 are published figures, 31 are worked out from published figures, and 17 are our own estimates. 40 of them were read straight out of a federal file that covers every city in the country, so there was no citation to trust and no page to misread. You can change any of them. Your result is only as good as the numbers you agree with.
Where the money goes on day one
The project is behind before the car turns a wheel. That is true in every town on this list, and it is the hole the months above are measured against.
The project is $4,634 down before the first fare: $2,900 genuinely spent, and $1,734 that vanished the moment the car stopped being new.
Two honest caveats. The permit figure is marked placeholder because the model invents it — the obligation is real, the amount is not researched. And nothing here counts sales tax, excise, title or registration on the purchase, which vary by state and this model does not yet carry, so every figure is a best case.
What comes off every fare before you see it
That 30% comes off the top — before energy, cleaning, insurance, the depot or the loan payment. Every figure on this page is already after it.
Tesla has published no owner-operator revenue share for Robotaxi, anywhere, so this is an expectation rather than a reported figure. 30% is roughly what the established ride-hail platforms take and what people following the rollout broadly expect. It is the largest single lever in the whole model: at 25% instead, the same season leaves about 7% more in your hand — more than any driving decision you can make. Fares also settle 7 days after they are earned.
Why this town is in the game
Asked for by Dave, to put North Carolina on the ladder. It has the second-highest demand per resident of any town here -- 114 rides a day per thousand people, behind only Las Vegas -- on a population of 93,523. That is a tourist town's number, not a city's, and it is the clearest case on the ladder of visitors rather than residents driving the fleet. Two caveats travel with it: four utilities file a service territory for Buncombe County and it resolved to Duke Energy Progress, and the annual visitor count lost its citation on re-fetch, so the visitor split underneath that demand is an estimate.
Other lenses on Asheville, NC
The same research pack feeds more than one simulator. ⚡ A two-stall DC fast-charging site pays back here under the default assumptions: about 16.1 stops a day against a break-even of 10.2, 15 public fast-charging sites already within 10 miles, payback 3.4 years.
See the arithmetic and change the assumptions →
Counted again from the US DOE station list by a second route — American Adventurer’s copy of the same 2026-09-16 AFDC snapshot, filtered the same way (open, public, unrestricted, at least one DC fast port):
- Within 10 miles: 15 sites (87 fast ports) — the research pack, counted independently, says the same
- Within 25 miles: 22 sites (130 fast ports) — the research pack, counted independently, says the same
🧺 A coin laundromat is marginal here under the default assumptions: about 912 laundromat households inside 1.5 miles (no car, renters, owners), 560 loads a week (the store is full) against a break-even of 561, attended 84 hours a week at the local $16.27 wage, payback 12.2 years. Run unattended, nothing else changed, it pays back: payback 2.9 years.
See the arithmetic and change the assumptions →
OpenStreetMap maps 1 laundromat within 1.5 miles of the town centre as of 2026-07-09. That is a floor, not a survey: it counts what somebody has mapped, and mapping coverage varies enormously between towns. The model above is still splitting demand with its own editable estimate of 3 stores, which is what the payback figure rests on; move that one for the town you know. Laundromat locations: © OpenStreetMap contributors, via American Adventurer.
Camping near Asheville, NC
44 public-land camps within 30 straight-line miles of the town center in the American Adventurer record: 26 free · 16 fee · 2 unpriced.
None of them carries an agency season record in this data, so nothing here is called open.
Nearest listed-open DC fast charger to a free camp: 1.9 mi straight-line — Catawba Vale Collaborative LLC (CHAdeMO, CCS), per the US DOE station list. “Listed open” is the list’s word; check the network before you count on it.
- Buncombe County — 7.2 mi · fee site
- Lake Powhatan Campground — 7.5 mi · fee site
- Wash Creek Roadside Campsites — 11.0 mi · free
The full list, as JSON → · Browse every camp in North Carolina → · The map, centered here with a 30-mile ring →
Data: American Adventurer (davelalande.com), built 2026-09-18T07:30:56Z; read 2026-09-18. Straight-line miles from the Census town center, not driving distance; the American Adventurer record, not every campground.
What this row rests on
78 numbers describe this town. Every one of them says where it came from.
- power_utility: 4 utilities file a service territory for Buncombe County, and the two largest -- Duke Energy Carolinas, LLC with 1,919,372 customers and Duke Energy Progress - (NC) with 1,356,079 -- are close enough in size that the county file cannot say which one this city is on. No utility and no utility rate were taken from it; the question goes to the research pass instead.
- visitor_air_arrival_share: downgraded to an estimate because 'visitors_year', which it is derived from, lost its citation
- rides_per_day: the five named sources were checked and none publishes a trip count for this city, so the estimate stands on its own arithmetic
Some of the numbers, and where they came from
A sample. The whole pack is in the data API.
Researched 2026-09-14 on pipeline 2.1.0. Measured on sim 1.5.0, 12 seeds, median reported. A result is only comparable to another from the same sim version. The camping card is the American Adventurer record within 30 straight-line miles of the Census town center, read 2026-09-18: not driving distance, and not every campground.