What we built
The operations layer a driverless fleet cannot run without.
Ride-hailing worked because the driver absorbed everything nobody paid for. They noticed the spilled coffee, heard the new rattle, wiped the camera lens, took the car for a wash on their own time. Remove the driver and none of that disappears. It just stops happening.
Mersul is the software that notices instead, and the marketplace that gets the work done. Telemetry catches the problem, rules decide who to send, the money is authorized up front and held until photographic proof clears, and the car puts itself back on the network. The owner reads the receipt afterwards.
Detection
Cabin sensors, tire pressure, charge state and rider reports all resolve into one queue of things wrong with the fleet.
Dispatch
A scoring matrix over local vendors: distance, ETA, reliability, price. It picks one and gives them thirty seconds.
Job-scoped vehicle access
Scoped to one car, one job, live only when the vendor is at the vehicle, revoked the moment the work verifies.
Verification
Before-and-after photos graded automatically. A pass releases the car to the network without anyone looking.
Payment on proof
The owner’s money is authorized when the job is dispatched and taken once the work verifies. Stripe holds it through the review window before it reaches the vendor, and a dispute pauses the payout while we gather the evidence.
Reconciliation
Our dispatch log against the ride network’s settlement statement, line by line, so revenue is checked rather than assumed.
What we decided
Six choices that shaped the product.
Most of the work was deciding what not to do. These are the calls that made the rest of it follow.
01
No star ratings anywhere
Nobody is in the car to rate the work, so asking owners to log in and click stars would return nothing. Vendors carry a reliability index computed from acceptance, ETA, turnaround and photo first-pass rate, with rider complaints traced back to whoever last unlocked the car.
02
Rules you can dry-run
Automation you cannot test is automation you will not trust with a fleet you paid for. Every rule replays against historical events and reports what it would have fired and cost before it goes live.
03
Insurance in two tiers, not one bar
Demanding commercial cover from every vendor would starve the supply side; demanding none would leave owners exposed. Pros bring a verified policy and see every category, and theirs is primary. Everyone else is covered per job by our master policy, funded by 2 percent of their payout, and takes cleaning, inspection and triage. Owners choose which tier a rule may dispatch to. No job is dispatched before that policy is in force.
04
We never touch ride revenue
Fares settle from the network to the owner and we take no cut. We charge a subscription and pass card processing through at cost, which keeps our incentive on jobs completed rather than on volume of spend.
05
Reconciliation as a first-class screen
The revenue side is the one thing an operator does not control and cannot audit. Rather than display the network’s number as fact, we compare it to our own dispatch record and give the owner somewhere to raise the difference.
06
Built for phones as well as desks
Approvals arrive as a push with the estimate, the photos and three buttons, because the decision that keeps a car earning happens away from a monitor.
The company
Where mersul actually stands today.
This is a market that does not exist yet, which is exactly the condition in which companies overstate what they have. So here is the unglamorous version, dated and specific.
Status
Pre-launch. The platform is built and running against Tesla’s fleet API in a test environment with simulated vehicles. No customer fleet is connected, no dispatch has been made, and nothing is billed.
What is not ours to decide
When robotaxis can be bought commercially, at what price, and on what terms. We publish what is and is not known about that on a dated page rather than implying we know more than we do.
What we are doing meanwhile
Recruiting vendor supply market by market — detailers, washes, tire techs, EV mechanics, glass, recovery and staging — because a city with no cleaners is useless on day one.
Where we are
Mersul, LLC is based in Tempe, Arizona. We recruit vendor supply market by market rather than running every city from one office, so the team works where the markets are.
Affiliation
Mersul, LLC is an independent company. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a partner of Tesla, Inc. Tesla, Cybercab and Robotaxi are trademarks of Tesla, Inc., used here for identification only.
For vendors
Work that comes to you, priced before you drive.
Cleaners, washes, mobile tire and EV mechanics: jobs arrive with the location, the scope and the price already agreed. Show up, unlock with access granted for that job, submit your photos, get paid on a schedule you can plan around. Do good work and you get first refusal on the next one.
Join the vendor waitlistFor investors
Every autonomous fleet will need this layer.
Autonomy removes the driver and with them the entire unpaid maintenance workforce that ride-hail was built on. Somebody has to broker the physical work back in, per city, per incident, with proof it happened. That is a marketplace with two hard sides and a defensible middle.
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