← The ladder
Wichita, KS
OriginalThis is a planning tool, not a prediction. Of the 79 numbers behind a season in Wichita, 24 are published figures, 33 are worked out from published figures, and 22 are our own estimates. 42 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
4.9 months
After 90 days the project is worth
$8,194
Against the $10,000 you put in
-$1,806
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
400,987
Sedgwick County
Rides a day
6,152
all operators, town-wide
Fast charging
$0.68
per kWh, public
Why this town is in the game
The medium band of the first batch.
What this row rests on
79 numbers describe this town. Every one of
them says where it came from.
24 published by somebody else
33 worked out from those
22 our own estimates
Citations we went back and checked
7 held
/ 6 failed
Anything that failed was demoted to an estimate and says so.
What we could not find out
1
- 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 estimate6,152 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 estimate5.5 miles
Nobody publishes Wichita TNC trip length; 5.5 miles is reasoned from the city’s own 165.074 sq mi land area and 18.4-minute mean commute, stepped down from national TNC averages near 6 miles. no published figure we could verify
Passengers boarding a yearpublished885,585 enplanements/year
Overnight electricityworked out0.083 $/kWh
Evergy Kansas South optional residential Time of Use (schedule TOU / WSTOU) super-off-peak energy charge for midnight–6:00 every day, plus current per-kWh riders (TDC, RECA/fuel, PTS, EER); all-in energy+delivery+riders, excluding the $15.25 monthly customer c
Evening peak electricityworked out0.291 $/kWh
Same Evergy Kansas South residential TOU tariff On-Peak energy charge (4:00 PM–8:00 PM Monday–Friday excluding holidays) plus the same per-kWh riders. Mapped to the requested 16:00–midnight window even though the tariff’s true on-peak is only those four weekda
Insurance on each car after the firstworked out221 $/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 out880 $/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 out76 $
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 generatorspublished
Spirit AeroSystems 13,000; Textron Aviation 9,350; McConnell AFB 5,679; Wichita Public Schools 5,614; Ascension Via Christi 4,413; Koch Industries 3,100; WSU; Wesley Healthcare
City of Wichita's own major-employers list — aerospace plants, the AFB, schools and hospitals are the named generators that actually move local demand.
City of WichitaPublished paid-ride countour estimate0 trips/year
No Kansas, city, airport, MPO, or local-news source publishes Wichita taxi or TNC trip totals; 0 means none found, not that rides are zero. A taxi-only figure would have been a floor, not a total. 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.