← The ladder

Sarasota, FL

Requested

This is a planning tool, not a prediction. Of the 80 numbers behind a season in Sarasota, 27 are published figures, 30 are worked out from published figures, and 23 are our own estimates. 43 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
1.5 months
After 90 days the project is worth
$14,363
Against the $10,000 you put in
+$4,363
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
58,458
Sarasota County
Rides a day
4,183
all operators, town-wide
Airport
4.0 mi
worked out
Fast charging
$0.39
per kWh, public

Why this town is in the game

Asked for by Dave. It carries the largest airport in the whole set by an order of magnitude, 2,112,417 boardings four miles out, against a metro of 479,958 -- and it still only just beats Ely, Nevada, population 3,946. One car can take so many fares a day and no more, so past that point extra demand buys nothing.

What this row rests on

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

27 published by somebody else 30 worked out from those 23 our own estimates
Citations we went back and checked
9 held / 4 failed
Anything that failed was demoted to an estimate and says so.
What we could not find out
5
  • power_offpeak: downgraded to an estimate because 'visitor_party_size', which it is derived from, lost its citation
  • power_onpeak: downgraded to an estimate because 'visitor_party_size', which it is derived from, lost its citation
  • college_enrollment: downgraded to an estimate because 'visitor_nights_avg', which it is derived from, lost its citation
  • 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.

Rides a day, whole townour estimate4,183 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 estimate4.5 miles
Nobody publishes TNC trip length for Sarasota. The city's 14.703 sq mi land area is the strongest local fact; the 20.7-minute mean commute and county bus trip length are the checks. no published figure we could verify
Passengers boarding a yearpublished2,112,417 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 electricityour estimate0.0961 $/kWh
Florida Power & Light GST-1 small-commercial time-of-use all-in off-peak (base energy + fuel + conservation + capacity + environmental + storm-protection − 2026 transition credit). Midnight–06:00 is off-peak every day on GST-1 and on residential rider RTR-1. D no published figure we could verify
On-peak electricityour estimate0.1976 $/kWh
FPL GST-1 all-in on-peak (same riders as off-peak). FPL’s actual on-peak is weekdays noon–9pm ET April–October and 6–10am plus 6–10pm ET November–March, not 16:00–24:00; after 9pm/10pm and all weekends are off-peak. This is the rate charged during designated o no published figure we could verify
Insurance on each car after the firstworked out424 $/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 out1,520 $/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 out67 $
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 generatorsour estimate
Sarasota Memorial Hospital-Sarasota (897 licensed beds; 10,000+ system staff, county’s largest employer); Ringling College of Art and Design (1,666 students); New College of Florida (881) plus ~1,000
These are the named, sourced trip generators inside or on the edge of the city — hospital, colleges, island retail/beach, spring-training ballpark, and the airport. no published figure we could verify
Published paid-ride countour estimate0 trips/year
No public count of commercial Uber/Lyft/taxi trips for the City of Sarasota or Sarasota County. Florida law blocks the local reports other states publish. Zero here means 'none found after the five-source check,' not 'zero rides.' no published figure we could verify

Researched 2026-09-12 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.