Buffalo, NY

Requested

This is a planning tool, not a prediction. Of the 77 numbers behind a season in Buffalo, 27 are published figures, 32 are worked out from published figures, and 18 are our own estimates. 39 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

13.3 months

After 90 days the project is worth

$6,413

Against the $10,000 you put in

-$3,587

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

274,613

Erie County

Rides a day

13,661

all operators, town-wide

Airport

7.3 mi

worked out

Fast charging

$0.47

per kWh, public

Why this town is in the game

Asked for by Dave, to reach a state the ladder had never touched. It is the first real transit city in the set: 22.6% of Buffalo households have no car, three times anything else here, against a cold 48.8F year. Five utilities file a service territory for Erie County and the federal file could not say which one the city is on, so the research pass settled it: National Grid.

What this row rests on

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

27 published by somebody else 32 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

power_utility: 5 utilities file a service territory for Erie County, and the two largest -- Niagara Mohawk Power Corp. with 1,430,208 customers and New York State Elec & Gas Corp with 735,192 -- are close enough in size that the county file cannot say which one this city is on. No utility and no utility rate were taken from it; the question goes to the research pass instead.
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 estimate13,661 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 estimate4.8 miles

Nobody publishes a Buffalo TNC mean trip length; the city’s own 40.376 sq mi land area, 19.9-minute mean commute, and Uber’s listed Buffalo routes are the local facts to reason from. no published figure we could verify

Passengers boarding a yearpublished2,499,295 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 electricityworked out0.116 $/kWh

All-in SC-1 VTOU off-peak (11pm–7am, which covers midnight–06:00) for Buffalo Load Zone A: VTOU off-peak delivery plus 12-month trailing off-peak supply (ESCOST+ESRM+CESS+MFC) plus typical delivery riders. Excludes the $19+$4.42 monthly customer charges, gross

Evening electricityworked out0.255 $/kWh

Same SC-1 VTOU on-peak all-in as daytime: delivery is one 7am–11pm rate. 16:00–23:00 is on-peak; 23:00–24:00 flips back to off-peak. The only extra evening cost is commodity super-peak, 2pm–6pm on non-holiday weekdays in June–August, which would push those fou

Insurance on each car after the firstworked out399 $/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 out944 $/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 out69 $

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

ECMC (573 inpatient beds, Level 1 trauma); Buffalo General/GVI (526 beds on BNMC); Mercy (387 beds, South Buffalo); Buffalo State 6,095; D'Youville 2,893; Canisius 2,451; UB 30,400 mostly Amherst Nort

The hospitals, city-sited colleges and the downtown arena are the named generators a fleet actually sees; UB's headcount is listed but most of it sits in Amherst, not in the city.

Published paid-ride count (independent cross-check)our estimate0 trips/year

No public taxi or TNC trip total for Buffalo or Erie County turned up after checking the five required source classes. Zero here means “no published count,” not “no rides.” no published figure we could verify

Researched 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.