← The ladder

Clifton, AZ

Original

This is a planning tool, not a prediction. Of the 80 numbers behind a season in Clifton, 28 are published figures, 29 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
7.4 months
After 90 days the project is worth
$7,236
Against the $10,000 you put in
-$2,764
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
3,752
Greenlee County
Rides a day
14
all operators, town-wide
Airport
70.9 mi
worked out
Fast charging
$0.48
per kWh, public

Why this town is in the game

Bought to test one big employer, a copper mine, instead of tourism.

What this row rests on

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

28 published by somebody else 29 worked out from those 23 our own estimates
Citations we went back and checked
10 held / 7 failed
Anything that failed was demoted to an estimate and says so.
What we could not find out
4
  • visitor_air_arrival_share: the nearest commercial airport is 71 miles away, past the 35-mile line at which it stops being this town's airport, so its boardings were NOT divided by this town's visitors -- doing so would have handed a small town a large airport's traffic
  • visitor_air_arrival_share: could not be built, so visitors are counted as arriving by road and the visitor stream is a floor
  • visitor_airport_ridehail_share: the panel's own draws disagreed by 2.0x (0.1, 0.05, 0.08, 0.1, 0.08), so this component is not settled and the range on rides per day is wide because of it
  • 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 estimate14 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 estimate5.0 mi
Nobody publishes paid-trip lengths for Clifton, so the town's own land area and the Clifton–Morenci corridor are the right local geometry. no published figure we could verify
Passengers boarding a yearpublished6,915 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 electricitypublished0.08468 $/kWh
APS Rate Schedule R-EV bundled Overnight Energy Charge (11pm-5am weekdays year-round) that covers nearly the entire midnight-06:00 window for EV charging; includes generation, delivery, transmission and system benefits (riders add ~3.3¢ extra). This is a secon Arizona Public Service Co
Evening peak electricitypublished0.34396 $/kWh
APS TOU-E summer On-Peak Energy Charge (4pm-7pm weekdays); the 16:00-midnight window mixes 3 hours of this rate with 5 hours of off-peak so the bucket average is lower. R-EV on-peak is 36.824¢. This is a secondary source -- it republishes a figure it did not i Arizona Public Service Co
Insurance on each car after the firstworked out306 $/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 out548 $/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 out65 $
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 generatorsour estimate
Freeport-McMoRan Morenci copper mine (3,600 jobs), Greenlee County government (170), Morenci Unified School District (180), Town of Clifton (60); historic Chase Creek district and train-depot visitor
The mine and county government dominate employment; there is neither a hospital nor a college inside Clifton itself. Unconfirmed -- treated as our estimate. no published figure we could verify
Published paid-ride countour estimate0 trips/year
No independent taxi or TNC trip total exists for Clifton or Greenlee County, so the chain cannot be cross-checked against an official count; 0 here means none published, not zero rides. no published figure we could verify

Researched 2026-09-09 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.