← The ladder
Nashville, TN
RequestedThis is a planning tool, not a prediction. Of the 77 numbers behind a season in Nashville, 22 are published figures, 32 are worked out from published figures, and 23 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.
How long until
you have your $10,000 back
2.9 months
After 90 days the project is worth
$10,205
Against the $10,000 you put in
+$205
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
721,074
Davidson County
Rides a day
38,187
all operators, town-wide
Fast charging
$0.60
per kWh, public
Why this town is in the game
Asked for by Dave. The biggest airport on the list by a distance -- 12,058,688 boardings, nearly five times Buffalo -- and the highest demand of any town here at 38,187 rides a day. Read its row with the model's own limit in mind: the research calls Nashville a multi-district metro, and the simulation has no multi-district geometry for a pack, so it is run as a single service area. Its research is also the thinnest on the list, holding 6 of 13 citations, which is why it carries more estimates than any other town.
What this row rests on
77 numbers describe this town. Every one of
them says where it came from.
22 published by somebody else
32 worked out from those
23 our own estimates
Citations we went back and checked
6 held
/ 7 failed
Anything that failed was demoted to an estimate and says so.
What we could not find out
2
- visitor_air_arrival_share: downgraded to an estimate because 'visitors_year', which it is derived from, lost its citation
- rides_per_day: the chain (38,187/day) and the published cross-check (10,110/day) disagree by 3.8x -- the estimate is an order of magnitude only
Some of the numbers, and where they came from
A sample. The whole pack is in the data API.
Rides a day, whole townour estimate38,187 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
Nobody publishes Nashville TNC trip length; this steps a national TNC mean down onto this city’s own land area, 24.7-minute commute, 7-mile airport-downtown run, and a TNC study that included Nashville and found most trips short except to the airport. no published figure we could verify
Passengers boarding a yearpublished12,058,688 enplanements/year
Overnight electricityworked out0.1111 $/kWh
NES Schedule TGSA-1 summer off-peak energy plus the September 2026 fuel-cost adjustment; bundled energy (generation+delivery) and the TVA/NES fuel rider, but not the $326.79/month service charge or $5.45/kW demand. Midnight–06:00 is off-peak on this tariff exc
Evening electricityworked out0.1256 $/kWh
NES Schedule TGSA-1 summer on-peak energy plus the September 2026 fuel-cost adjustment. NES on-peak is 1 p.m.–7 p.m. (Apr–Oct weekdays) and 4 a.m.–10 a.m. (Nov–Mar weekdays), not 16:00–midnight; most of that evening window is actually off-peak.
Insurance on each car after the firstworked out239 $/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 out1,431 $/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 out76 $
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 generatorsworked out
VUH 904 licensed beds and VUMC 31,995 local employees; Vanderbilt 13,670 students; Belmont 9,026; TSU 5,364; HCA 27,700 and State of Tennessee 28,185 employees; Nissan Stadium (Titans) and Bridgestone
Names and sizes of the hospitals, campuses, employers and venues that actually move Nashville demand, taken from VUMC's own disclosure, university pages, and Metro's 2026 bond official statement.
Published paid-ride count (cross-check)published3,690,000 trips/year
BNA’s own count of Uber pickups and drop-offs at the airport over the prior year, quoted by WSMV in August 2025; airport-only and Uber-only, so a floor on citywide paid rides, not a total. Taxi at BNA is a further ~205k in local reporting but that article is p
WSMV, quoting Nashville International AirportResearched 2026-09-13 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.