← The ladder
Chicago, IL
OriginalThis is a planning tool, not a prediction. Of the 81 numbers behind a season in Chicago, 29 are published figures, 34 are worked out from published figures, and 18 are our own estimates. 44 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
3.3 months
After 90 days the project is worth
$9,577
Against the $10,000 you put in
-$423
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
2,731,585
Cook County
Rides a day
235,615
all operators, town-wide
Fast charging
$0.56
per kWh, public
Why this town is in the game
The large band of the first batch, to put a 2.7 million metro against a town of 1,900 on the same ladder.
What this row rests on
81 numbers describe this town. Every one of
them says where it came from.
29 published by somebody else
34 worked out from those
18 our own estimates
Citations we went back and checked
11 held
/ 6 failed
Anything that failed was demoted to an estimate and says so.
What we could not find out
0
- Nothing was left unanswered.
Some of the numbers, and where they came from
A sample. The whole pack is in the data API.
Rides a day, whole townour estimate235,615 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 lengthour estimate5.5 miles
Chicago’s own 227.748 sq mi land area sets the geographic scale; published TNC medians are shorter because demand piles up downtown, so 5.5 miles is a mean that respects both the city’s size and that concentration. no published figure we could verify
Passengers boarding a yearpublished10,360,093 enplanements/year
Overnight electricityworked out0.083 $/kWh
ComEd Rate BEST (residential bundled TOU) Overnight period (9 p.m.–6 a.m.) fully covers midnight–06:00; volumetric all-in for typical single-family non-electric-heat class (supply energy + PJM/misc + DTOD delivery + IEDT + REA). Capacity billed separately as d
On-peak electricityworked out0.177 $/kWh
Mapped 16:00–midnight onto remaining Mid-Day Peak (4–7 p.m.), Evening (7–9 p.m.) and start of Overnight (9 p.m.–midnight); same Rate BEST volumetric stack.
Insurance on each car after the firstworked out263 $/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 out1,299 $/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 out72 $
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
Named demand generatorsworked out
Northwestern Memorial Hospital (943 beds); UIC (35,869 students); University of Chicago (19,140); City Colleges of Chicago (44,296); DePaul (20,637); Illinois Tech (7,502); Grant Park / McCormick Plac
The hospitals, in-city universities, and venues that actually concentrate trips; figures are the sourced headcounts and bed count used elsewhere in this pack.
Published paid-ride countpublished250,000 trips/day
Sun-Times analysis of City of Chicago TNP data: about 250,000 rideshare trips on an average day in May 2026. This is TNC/rideshare only, not taxis (the same article puts cabs at about 22,000 trips/day), so it is a floor on all paid rides. This is a secondary s
Chicago Sun-TimesResearched 2026-09-09 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.