← The ladder

Burlington, VT

Requested

This is a planning tool, not a prediction. Of the 79 numbers behind a season in Burlington, 29 are published figures, 32 are worked out from published figures, and 18 are our own estimates. 42 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.

How long until you have your $10,000 back
1.1 months
After 90 days the project is worth
$18,384
Against the $10,000 you put in
+$8,384
This projects the first 90 days forward in a straight line. Early months carry start-up drag, so later ones may run better. It is a direction, not a date.

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.

You put in$10,000
Hard costs, paid once
Down payment on a $28,900 car -$2,900
Installing home charging -$2,250
Permits and onboardingplaceholder -$650
Money left to operate on$4,200
Plus the car equity. You paid $28,900, but it would only fetch $27,166 the moment it is yours, and you owe $26,000 of that +$1,166
What the project is worth on day one$5,366

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

The rider pays100%
The network takesour estimate −30%
Reaches the business70%

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.

People
44,019
Chittenden County
Rides a day
2,311
all operators, town-wide
Airport
4.4 mi
worked out
Fast charging
$0.24
per kWh, public

Why this town is in the game

Asked for by Dave, to put Vermont on the ladder. The smallest town of the overnight batch at 44,019 people, and a useful one because its power price is sourced rather than derived: 14.522 cents off-peak from Green Mountain Power, the fourth-dearest here. Demand holds up at 52.5 rides a day per thousand residents, better than metros several times its size, which is what a compact single-radius town with one big hospital and a university looks like in this model.

Other lenses on Burlington, VT

The same research pack feeds more than one simulator. ⚡ A two-stall DC fast-charging site does not pay here under the default assumptions: about 5.5 stops a day against a break-even of 100.2, 18 public fast-charging sites already within 10 miles, payback never.

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):

🧺 A coin laundromat does not pay here under the default assumptions: about 2,342 laundromat households inside 1.5 miles (no car, renters, owners), 560 loads a week (the store is full) against a break-even of 643, attended 84 hours a week at the local $18.10 wage, payback 82.9 years. Run unattended, nothing else changed, it pays back: payback 3.3 years.

See the arithmetic and change the assumptions →

OpenStreetMap maps 2 laundromats 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 Burlington, VT

46 public-land camps within 30 straight-line miles of the town center in the American Adventurer record: 42 free · 4 fee · 0 unpriced.

33 of them carry an agency season record; on 2026-09-17, 33 read open. The other 13 have no record, and no record is not “open”.

Nearest listed-open DC fast charger to a free camp: 3.5 mi straight-line — Town of Westport (CCS), per the US DOE station list. “Listed open” is the list’s word; check the network before you count on it.

Closest to the town center

The full list, as JSON → · Browse every camp in Vermont → · 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

79 numbers describe this town. Every one of them says where it came from.

29 published by somebody else 32 worked out from those 18 our own estimates
Citations we went back and checked
12 held / 6 failed
Anything that failed was demoted to an estimate and says so.
What we could not find out
1
  • 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.

Rides a day, whole townour estimate2,311 rides/day
Total app-hailed trips a day across every operator in the city -- the pool your fleet competes for a share of, not the number you will get. no published figure we could verify
Average paid trip lengthworked out3.4 miles
Nobody publishes a Burlington TNC trip-length table; the city’s own 10.303 sq mi land area plus Uber’s published 4-mile BTV–downtown hop are the strongest local geometry, and the 18.7-minute mean commute says trips here are short.
Passengers boarding a yearpublished670,636 enplanements/year
FAA calendar year 2024 ENPLANEMENTS -- passengers BOARDING, which is about half of the arrivals-plus-departures figure an airport press release quotes. This is the federal count, read out of the FAA's own file. FAA, CY2024 Passenger Boarding (Enplanement) Data for U.S. Airports
Overnight electricitypublished0.14522 $/kWh
Green Mountain Power Rate 11 Residential Time-of-Use off-peak energy charge (bundled energy + delivery); midnight–06:00 is always off-peak because peak is only eight weekday hours between 1:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. Daily customer charge ($0.830/day) and percentag Green Mountain Power Rate 11 tariff
Evening peak electricitypublished0.34072 $/kWh
GMP Rate 11 on-peak energy charge (bundled energy + delivery) for the eight consecutive weekday hours between 1:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m., which is the tariff window that covers the late-afternoon/evening part of 16:00–midnight; after about 9 p.m. and all weekend Green Mountain Power Rate 11 tariff
Insurance on each car after the firstworked out203 $/month
What each additional vehicle adds to the premium. Lower than the first car because a fleet policy spreads the administrative part of a premium across the vehicles while the risk part scales with them -- which is part of why growing is the way out of the trap.
A small commercial bay, per monthworked out1,488 $/month
This is a derivation, not a local quote: a national published figure scaled by a published local index. Nobody publishes what a 1,500 square foot bay lets for in a town this size, because small commercial bays let privately, one handshake at a time, and no ind
A full interior cleanworked out77 $
This is a derivation, not a local quote: a national published figure scaled by a published local index. Nobody publishes a full interior detail in a town this size, because it is a manual service: keeping a price list current is work, and the price is whatever
Demand generatorspublished
UVM Medical Center (Vermont's largest hospital, Level I trauma, 8,200–10,000 employees, 562 licensed beds); University of Vermont (14,425 students, 4,125 staff); Champlain College (3,259 students, Hil
These are the named in-city trip magnets: the academic medical center and UVM are the city's (and state's) largest employers, Champlain sits in the Hill Section, Church Street is the pedestrian retail core, and Burton/South End is the industrial-arts generator Wikipedia, Burlington, Vermont (Economy)
Published paid-ride countour estimate0 trips/year
No Vermont or Burlington agency publishes a TNC or taxi trip total for this city; the zero is an audited absence, not a claim that zero rides occur. no published figure we could verify

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.