Will renting a Tesla on Turo pay for the car? (2023)

Introduction

Buying a Tesla is no doubt expensive, but how much of that cost could you offset by renting it out a few days on Turo?
Bob Jacobson in Orlando, Florida has learned, quite a lot. He has gone from having three personal Teslas to 9 n about a year and now runs the biggest Turo Tesla fleet in his area.
If you are in Orlando, find him at Roboride.us

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Content

I know, I cover a lot of Tesla news.

But people are still surprised to learn that I don't own a Tesla.

And you guys it's because they're pretty expensive cars.

Of course, they're also amazing electric vehicles and quite sexy may I, add, but I wanted to know if I bought a Tesla and rented it out on turo would the car pay for itself.

Let me refine that if I bought a Tesla and rented it out part-time because obviously I'd want to enjoy it for myself, how much could I make obviously a lot of this depends on your area.

But you'll, notice, if you look on turo, which is a way that you can privately rent out your cars, Teslas tend to be rented out for a higher price.

So imagining you had the ideal setup like space for the car at home, maybe an extra personal car in proximity to an airport.

What else do you need to know before starting your own turo business? Well, let's ask Bob, Bob lives near Orlando.

We call him Tesla Bob, because he has a growing Fleet of the sexy Tesla vehicles.

He started with three of his own personal Teslas.

And in just a year, he's acquired, nine, total with more on the way, but there's a bigger picture or goal behind getting all of these cars we're trying to build a Fleet of Teslas for the Tesla Robo taxi business.

So the current cost of model 3 Robo.

Taxi is, um less than 38 000.

We expect that number to improve over time and resigning the cars.

The car is currently being built are all designed for a million miles of operation when you use the car we'll show you our ride sharing app so you're able to be able to summon the car from the parking lot get in and go for a drive gonna be kind of like, um, an automated Uber service that you know, people can order a ride on, uh on an app.

And then the car will show up pick them up and also can be kind of like the turo business where they might be on vacation and want the car for the whole week.

So it can be short term for a ride or a long week or even a month.

He says in the past year, they've had 65 rentals it's, pretty constant Maybe.

Once in a while we get a little bit of a break for a week.

And then it picks right back up so I wanted to Niche the hardest part of running a turo business.

I guess just cleaning the cars, it's, really, really not that difficult.

You gotta be available to to take care of the cars and meet the people and give them a little instruction, especially with an EV like how has that experience been you said that most people are first-time drivers? Yep, so we have to educate the probably 90 percent of the drivers is the first time they're looking for the uh experience of driving a Tesla.

They want to know if they want to buy a Tesla.

So after they rent the uh, the Tesla for a week, I would say the majority of them place.

The order I was going to say a lot of conversions right? Bob says, the process is streamlined customers can leave the key in the car.

And he can lock the car remotely and he's inspired several people to not only buy a Tesla, but some even to take up starting their own turo business, there's other people that people that have rented from us.

And then they have told me that they're going to order a Tesla and do the same thing.

Yeah, definitely influencing other people to do it.

Bob says, yeah, there are a few other people in his area that rent out their Tesla's on turo.

But we are the biggest Fleet and, um I think we have the highest rating so wow, it's been good.

So if someone comes to the Orlando area hit you up at Robo ride, Florida, yep, or a cruise ship in Cape Canaveral we're here.

So how many miles are these customers tacking on to Bob's Teslas I've had people rent them for three weeks and go to like Maryland.

So they they go like 3, 000 miles on on a rental and I've had them drive all over Florida.

You know, put a couple thousand miles on it in a week.

So has anyone actually the car died on them.

And you had to walk them through it, um I've never had one completely die.

I've had one go all the way down to zero.

And it was it was, you know, it was uh questionable.

But it managed to get charged without dying on the road.

And what about any damage? No exterior damage? One family was uh, lathered up in sunblock.

And we had a lot of sunblock all over the cars, which took a few hours to get cleaned up I was thinking about renting, the The Plaid at a much higher rate, but I talked to another turo renter down in Miami.

They have five plaids.

And they said, they won't, rent them out anymore because people pushed them.

And really, you know, they're hard on the Cars.

One, three, four, five, oh, my God that was nuts.

So they they advised me don't, rent out the plot many of Bob's cars are actually wrapped by his daughter.

I asked him why he chooses to change the colors of his Fleet.

We've got almost the whole Fleet wrapped.

Now we got two more wrapped this week.

The two reasons is it will protect the paint.

Um from small dings and debris hitting the car.

And also you can have some very unique colors that people really like my daughter has a a new business.

Miami Vice Customs is she self-talk.

She worked for a couple different wrapping companies, and she she's wrapped cars on her own.

And now she's in business she's got her new LLC and she's doing really well.

What is your normal rate? Can we ask? Um, right now, um, it's about 115 to 130.

It will probably go up during holiday season, which is coming right up even for the s, um, yeah.

Uh.

The ass will be more, but yeah, for the Y's.

And the threes that's that's, the rate, uh, the wise rent out for a little more than the threes I've been finding it it's, um, making about twice the payment so that's, why we've been able to add, um, I think we're gonna be adding a total of seven cars this year.

So if I want to Tesla I should just put it on turo, get two one for you and one for turtle, I've always thought that turo sounded interesting.

But it just seemed like, you know, there were too many risks associated with letting a stranger.

You know, what if there's an accident like I was nervous about that at the beginning.

And then as time goes on, you see that, um, you know, I've had really respectable, um renters.

And they they bring it.

They usually bring it back very clean wash the car charge the car.

Most of the time do people call you a lot with like problems that they're experiencing, um, usually, it's, just, um.

Maybe in the first hour, just yes, you know, getting familiar with the car and I've had people call from a supercharger getting tips on how to charge has having other people use your FSD, beta hurt your safety score or is it like yes, I had two FSD safety scores if you're allowed to get five disengagements.

And after that, it will shut off your FSD until a major update.

And then it will reinstate.

It.

Do you dock them for that? No no a lot of people from California renting your cars.

Yeah.

So when people fly in from California to come to like Orlando on vacation, they will find us and rent a Tesla because they have they own a Tesla in California.

And they don't want to go back to a gas car.

And who is like the ideal person to start a turo business like we were just talking about got to make sure you have room, maybe for for the extra Vehicles like maybe near an airport, yeah.

And you can rent out like if if you can be free enough to rent out your personal vehicle, then you can you don't have to have a dedicated turo car? Yeah, yeah.

But you know, if you keep a lot of stuff in your car that might be kind of a hassle, right? What is this one? What is her name? Okay, so the guy this is my daughter's car.

And um, this car is a performance model.

Three.

And of course, she robbed it.

What is this color called mint? I, I, call it mint? Yeah, it looks like a Tiffany jewelry box.

How about that? Yeah, sure I don't think I've seen one of those.

But that sounds right? And what is this? So yeah, that's just nonsense.

Well, when she wrapped it, she had to take off the Tesla emblems, and then she had that little sticker.

So as a joke, she just threw it on, oh, my God and it's, very people are very confused they're like.

Yeah.

What kind of car is this back in 2013? Um I was looking at buying a roadster used from Tesla and I called them up.

And they said, you should check out the Model S.

So they scheduled me for a 30 minute test drive in Boston and I went down.

And after driving the car I scrambled to find out how to open up a stock trading account and invested a bunch of money.

And the person that helped me set that up said, are you crazy? What are you doing? And then two weeks later, he also invested, oh, my gosh.

So you so you invested first, and then you got, you got a Tesla also also, yep.

And then so I ordered, the Tesla, the same day I opened up my trading account and I waited I had to wait six weeks to take delivery I.

Think the thing that back then when they told me that the car will come with a lifetime, free supercharging that that clinched the deal, how would you describe like Tesla's Evolution? I mean, we did a little FSD beta driving today and it's, obviously still not perfect.

But it must be like so far along.

Yeah, it's it's.

Exciting, every you know, it's between two weeks and a month, there's, a new update and it's always exciting to see what the uh how much better.

It gets and occasionally there's, some some backlash where that something might not work as well as it did it.

The Improvement rate is definitely seems like it's, it's improving faster.

Each update Tesla Bob also has several cyber trucks on order.

And he isn't alone.

There are now an estimated 1.5 Millions hybrid truck reservations, which means that if he is one of the first to get a cyber truck, you can almost guarantee it'll be rented out 24 7.

So visit his website at roboride.us I've got a lot of cyber trucks reserved.

So that that's going to be a really good one that's, a six seater.

And then it has a six and a half foot bed with a volt.

So you know running to the airport luggage goes in the back full room for six people and I think it'll be I think it'll be the perfect rental that will be the highest demand vehicle that we have.

Yeah, super exciting we'll, be back.

Once you get one so that we can do a follow-up.

Yup, if you don't come to me, I will come to you all right? I, love it.

What you may not know is a few days before this interview Bob joined me and a group of Ellie and space fans to watch SLS.

Finally, launch so I wanted to thank Bob for his time.

And for letting me experience what it would be like to own a Tesla, hey, Bob for your cooperation, I present to you.

Thank you.

Sls Artemis.

We watched the launch together so awesome.

So, thank you for, you know, letting us enjoy Tesla and yeah, now of course, since I've gotten home from this trip and driving around a Model S for a week, I definitely want a Tesla and I would love to have a turo business.

Someday, unfortunately, for me right now, I don't have the space to make that work.

But it is something that I'm very interested in doing in the future.

So hopefully you've learned something from this video again, I will link Bob's website in the description if you want to reach out to him.

And thank you so much for all of the love and support on the alien space.

Channel.

You guys are the ones who keep this channel alive with your subscribing to the channel by the way, that's, absolutely free.

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