← The ladder
San Buenaventura (Ventura), CA
OriginalThis is a planning tool, not a prediction. Of the 80 numbers behind a season in San Buenaventura (Ventura), 33 are published figures, 30 are worked out from published figures, and 17 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
2.9 months
After 90 days the project is worth
$10,209
Against the $10,000 you put in
+$209
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
109,914
Ventura County
Rides a day
1,206
all operators, town-wide
Fast charging
$0.76
per kWh, public
Why this town is in the game
Planned as a mid-size coastal market. It is also the Census name trap: typed as Ventura it matches NOTHING, and only the legal name San Buenaventura (Ventura) returns a population, land area, airport or climate.
What this row rests on
80 numbers describe this town. Every one of
them says where it came from.
33 published by somebody else
30 worked out from those
17 our own estimates
Citations we went back and checked
16 held
/ 1 failed
Anything that failed was demoted to an estimate and says so.
What we could not find out
3
- visitor_air_arrival_share: the nearest commercial airport is 35 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
- 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 estimate1,206 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 miles
No local TNC trip-length survey exists; the city's own land area is the strongest published geography for scaling a typical paid ride. no published figure we could verify
Passengers boarding a yearpublished696,396 enplanements/year
Overnight electricitypublished0.29 $/kWh
All-in summer TOU-D-PRIME overnight rate (9pm–8am, so midnight–06:00) for Ventura Clean Power Alliance customers: CPA generation plus SCE delivery; winter overnight is 27¢ on the same page. This is a secondary source -- it republishes a figure it did not itsel
Clean Power AllianceOn-peak electricitypublished0.67 $/kWh
All-in summer TOU-D-PRIME evening/on-peak rate (4pm–9pm weekdays) from the CPA tool; SCE/CPA peak is 4–9pm not until midnight (9pm–midnight is off-peak at 29¢). Winter evening is 63¢. This is a secondary source -- it republishes a figure it did not itself prod
Clean Power AllianceInsurance on each car after the firstworked out278 $/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 out1,983 $/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 out74 $
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
Community Memorial Hospital (250 beds) and Ventura County Medical Center; Ventura College (~11,700 students); County of Ventura (8,232 jobs); Patagonia HQ; Ventura Harbor/Channel Islands boats; Ventur
The named hospitals, college, largest public employer, headquarters, harbor and fairgrounds that actually concentrate trips; compiled from the hospital, college, city CAFR (via Wikipedia) and geography pages opened this session. no published figure we could verify
Independently reported paid ridesour estimate0 trips/year
No published TNC or taxi trip total was found for the city; the zero is an audited absence, not an assumption that zero rides occur. 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.