Contents

1. Overview

The Tesla Network is a way to monetize the most astonishing (Model 3, Model X and Model S) and bizarre electric vehicles (Cybertruck) which can well pay away any price difference with conventional cars. While waiting for full autonomy, it is already envisegeable to make money with the Tesla Pickup in three ways:

1. offering services based on the towing (3,400 kg-6,350 kg, depending on the versions) and payload (1,500 kg for all three versions) capabilities of the pickup, including its air compressor;

2. renting the vehicle during the exact hours in which you do not drive it;

3. letting the vehicle available in a central location for around-the-clock renting.

2. The key features of the vehicle

The Tesla Cyberpickup offers many of the advantages of a traditional pickup, being stronger than a Ford F-150, adding the quickest acceleration in class, which led to beat a Porsche 911 in a race, and, among the electric vehicles, a wide price range (39 900$ - 49 900$ - 69 900$), with the basic version that suprised the expectations with some 10 000 $ less than any price that circulated in the press before the launch (possibly because of a number of tough decisions, such as the unpainted stainless steel body to skip the paint shop costs altogether).

This is its interior for six people:

It's a vehicle that maybe not all people would like to own everyday, but that would assure a day of emotion and well done work - that's one reason for which demand for renting can come.

Despite all criticisms from many media outles, sales of the Cybertrucks have been pretty high, with 146 000 pre-orders in the first 36 hours after unveiling the model, with about 60 000 for the top version, a similar number for the intermediate model and about 26000 for the basic model, for a revenue for Tesla of over 8 billion dollars. As time runs, the total pre-ordering is counting up.

3. The core concept of the new business model

By offering to deliver goods and services, such as transporting building materials or delivering purchases, in your Tesla pickup, you can make money and repay any extra-expenses you might incur while choosing an electric pickup. You simply select the day of the week in which you can carry out the work, your normal hours, and additional timing available for an extra fee. Then, in a calender, you specify if certain days have already been booked or you are simply out of office.

By setting a standard fee for an hour, for km made, for tons of delivered good, you may easily establish a comparable estimation of what you would charge, which in turn means that the client, in an envisegeable App, that we call TeslaNetwork-at-Work for simplicity's sake, gets all possible quotes from available supplier (by specifying location, timing and the other parametres).

At that point, he will be choosing his preferred alternative, contact via the App the chosen provider, which may well be you, for confirmation, exchange of contact details, special requests, etc.

In opt-out logics, all clients of the Tesla Pickup are registered and given the app. They may explicitly renounce to this opportunity, or simply not fill in the calendar of availability. But, as nudge theory would suggest, being already registered (with the data given at the moment of purchasing or reserving the vehicle) is a default value that will induce a larger rate of adoption, which in turn means a critical mass of suppliers, which will justify a potential demand to explore the app and materialize in specific requests.
With a tentative fee of 25 dollars a hour plus 0.2 dollars per km, one could make 1000 dollars a week or more, with 40 hours a week. In some 40 weeks, it's almost the full the price of the pickup itself. Deducting your personal labour cost, you repay the price difference with a gasoline pickup in less than 6 months.

Since the Tesla Pickup is all-electric, you'll have large savings from the fuel cost, which is cut by more than 50%. And the impressive image that may attract your customers, to which you offer something different.

In other terms, you have in hand a tool that tows more, has larger payload, goes faster and save most of the "fuel" than, say, a Ford F-150, thus you can price undercut other typical suppliers, earn a fatter profit, and provide a better service - becoming what we called a "strong competitor". With everybody knowing it, thanks to the Tesla Network image and pervasiveness, clients will flow to you, saturating your available time, thus optimising your revenue streams.

This can happen for any hard work in an industry or simply for substituting shopping trips ("I shop for you"). The payload of 1500 kg is equivalent to 15 deliveries of 100 kg of shopping items (for a simulation of purchases where weight is a parametre see this model of ours); if each has an average cost of 20$ per kg, you are transporting things worth a total 30 000$, on which you can easily claim 30$ per delivery, thus a total of 450$ per truck load.

If, however, you have another job or you simply do not like to do the work yourself, you may enact the extended concept.

4. Tesla pickup rental by the hour

During the hours in which you are not in it, for instance because you are in an office to work, a member of the Tesla Network could take your pickup, pay for the hours you are renting it, and bring it back to the same location you left it before you need it. You'll notice nothing but the money on your Tesla or bank account. You make money during the night, leaving the pickup parked in an accessible parking space near your house, with people renting for a job, and giving it back before you wake up next morning.

This requires a certain app and system, by which there are large penalties for giving the pickup back late. You fix the time in which you need the car again with aboundant buffer, and the system applies hefty fees as soon as the indicated deadline is transpassed.

Belonging to the Tesla Network is a privilege that can be lost if someone infringe the rules, thus you can be rather confident of being able to use your car when you planned. Conversely, the Tesla Network would have every incentive to screen members and ensure they have a safe driving record.

With driverless upgrade, the pickup itself can go to a place with a customer, who can leave it in any place of his choice, since the pickup will go back to you without a driver. But for that, time, safety and regulations will be needed. With the current technologies, what is feasible is a place-constraint pick up and restitution.

5. Tesla cybertruck rental for days and days

You may intentionally leave your truck in a very central place, a station, a logistic hub, a regenerated neighbourhood, so that customers can ignore your personal house location and give it back in a place where it is easy for others to rent. This multiplies the chance of a round-the-clock monetization, with the pickup paying itself much faster and providing an income stream without too much of a worry.

Although you are already making money out of it, profits are not literally equal to revenues: you shall still cover cyclical cleaning, a certain enhanced ammount of repair and maintenance, yet after paying back the cost of the pickup you'll have a decent income stream. Common insurances cover the different risks, including theft, and Tesla is beginning to offer insurance itself, which perspectively means that uncommon risks might be covered as well. The identity, the driving licence and the credit card of the renting person is a basic information revealed to the Tesla Network itself so he or she cannot simply disappear. This is what happens in any car rental today, inclusive of commercial rental insurance, liability insurance, contractual protection for damage and theft. And it would be part of your business as well.

Thus there are three ways in which you can take advantage of the Tesla Cyber Truck (or of the CYBRTRK as they call it - after Must talking about a cyberpunk electric pickup), not counting more future-oriented features like vehicle-to-house and vehicle-to-grid charging or the possibility that it becomes an appreciating asset.

6. What's currently lacking for these business models to work

We described a fully feasible Tesla pickup business model. However, currently, Tesla has not activated the Tesla Network and the Master Plan, Part Deux by Elon Musk is betting entirely on driverless autonomy and robo-taxis. There is yet not an App where you can rent by the hour, with the system of hefty fee for delay that is central to a rental without autonomy. However there do exist renting system where all Tesla vehicles, including Model 3 and Model X, can be profitably rented, such as Turo and Getaround.

The Tesla pickup is just being launched, and deliveries will require many months, so the business model envisaged in this short paper can be applied rather to other vehicles, highly preferably electric. However, all these aspects, including an App that might be first produced as mock-up and later as true application, simply require activation and investment.