I think they'll pay $600/mo for a chauffeur. They just won't pay it for a car they own. Tesla with FSD subscriptions is competing with themselves in a fully autonomous future and a $600/mo ride hail vehicle makes them $22,000 profit in a 5 year useful life while a car sold with a $200 subscription makes them $18,000. That is without consideration to profits from delivering edge compute during idle overnight. Or retaining scrap value of the aluminum and battery materials when the vehicle is no longer operational.
Total consumer outlay on a vehicle sold and subscription costs the consumer $73,000+ over a 5 year period. Average driver would spend half that renting rides.
FSD subscriptions on vehicle sales is not how Tesla makes maximal money. Their capital efficient method for selling rides is selling a bespoke fully autonomous vehicle to a consumer without a steering wheel, and then splitting profits on deployed Robotaxis from that fleet and recouping FSD expenses through profit sharing until they can self fund the entire fleet without selling cars to consumers.
It is estimated that at current consumption the entire vehicle market in the U.S. could be replicated with just 20 million vehicles on the road. Parking lots relinquished for housing and retail spaces. Garages converted to living spaces at an expense equivalent to the 5 year savings from not owning a car.
2030:
5 million Cybercabs at $.50/mile generates $109.5 billion in profits.
150,000 fully autonomous semis generates $50 billion in profits
20 million Optimus robots creating $1 in profit per hour of labor creates $300 billion in profits
$100 in incremental FSD subscriptions creates single digit billion in differences in annual profits. Convincing the public that autonomous cars are safer one year faster creates more future profit than they'd make off the increased subscriptions.
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