Robotaxi uptime: how to keep every car earning
What an idle day costs a robotaxi, where downtime comes from, and the routines that keep cars on the road.
By Fleetsly · Updated
For a robotaxi, uptime is the business. A car waiting for a tire, a charge or a cleaning earns nothing, while its insurance, parking and depreciation keep running. This guide puts a number on an idle day and lists the routines that keep cars on the road.
What an idle day costs
In the estimator’s base case (100 paid miles a day at $1.25 a mile, after a 30% platform fee), one car brings in $87.50 a day in net fares. Some running costs, like charging and cleaning, drop when the car sits still, but the fixed costs don’t.
| Downtime | Net fares lost |
|---|---|
| One day off the road | $87.50 |
| A week waiting for a part | $612.50 |
| 1% less uptime over a year (3.3 days) | $288.75 |
Multiply by the size of the fleet, and a slow repair process becomes the biggest cost you can control.
Where downtime comes from
- Defects found late. A soft tire or a dirty sensor that nobody saw until the car was already off the road.
- Slow repairs. No vendor booked, a part on back order, a work order nobody followed up.
- Charging at the wrong time. A whole group of cars on chargers during a busy hour.
- Offline cars. A car that stopped reporting and wasn’t noticed for hours.
- Cleaning backlogs. Cars waiting in line at the depot after a busy night.
Routines that keep cars earning
- Inspect every car before the morning rush, with photos, and act on critical findings at once.
- Schedule service by miles or days before it is due, at quiet hours.
- Keep vendors for tires, glass and repairs on call, and track how long each repair takes.
- Stagger charging and cleaning so they happen in the quiet hours.
- Alert someone the moment a car goes offline or reports a critical defect.
The daily items are in the robotaxi maintenance checklist, and How to charge a robotaxi fleet covers charging windows.
Measure it per car
Track uptime and downtime per car, and the reason for every stop. After a month you will see which cars, vendors and routines cost you the most days, and that is where to start.