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Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

blog.waymo.com

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Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#31

Post by mtmickush »

bushbaba wrote: post #16
sgarrity wrote: post #7

10,000 trips / week is impressive. How many vehicles is this?

It’s not really when you consider their burn rate. Say each of those trips gross 10$. That’s just 100k/week or $5.2 million/year. They’d need to likely 10,000x the ride volume to even be close to profitability. Uber does 7.64 billion rides per year. And they are not profitable. The waymo cars sure ain’t cheap, and scale of operations will take a ton of cash. I wonder if waymo would ever be profitable.

$5.2 million/year * 10,000 = $52 Billion / year if I'm understanding you correctly. That seems on the high side to me?

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#32

Post by boulos »

parshimers wrote: post #12

I know they started testing a while back in LA, has anyone been in one there? I haven’t seen them around town like I have in SF.

LA is employee only for now (https://twitter.com/Waymo/status/1630326911648841730?cxt=HHw...). We often do smaller announcements / updates only via Twitter, rather than a blog post on blog.waymo.com.

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#33

Post by peter422 »

mertd wrote: post #27
tommoor wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And pedestrian/cyclist safety

To be fair, human drivers don't do terribly well on that front.

The comment is saying these cars will improve pedestrian/cyclist safety.

I can also attest to it. I've interacted as a pedestrian and cyclist to many cruise and waymo cars and they've been very, very cautious and careful.

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#34

Post by genghisjahn »

aidos wrote: post #19
iinnPP wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree but also worry about the job loss and the inevitable loss of freedoms that will inevitably be 'justifiable' when automatic driving is the norm. Basically, if the cost can be comparable to car ownership, reducing resource use by making car buying of any kind far more difficult. Which is admittedly entirely a thought experiment. Though it is a thought experiment many authors seem to arrive at. Edit: I wish I co…

Which jobs are you thinking? Bus drivers? Taxis? Car production? Which loss of freedom are you referring to? I can’t help thinking that the potential upside will far out-way the cost. London streets are littered with dormant vehicles. Most just sit there taking up room and dominating the city. It would be a whole other city if we could change that dynamic.

Truck drivers mainly. There are LOTS of truck drivers.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-...

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#35

Post by dilap »

austinkhale wrote: post #15
dopamean wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you hate them at first? What about the experience of using the service changed your opinion?

> Why did you hate them at first? I walk my dogs twice a day and the cars are constantly driving by with their array of sensors. Made me feel like I was being constantly filmed and recorded... which as I understand them to work I certainly was/am. Outside of that, I resented being involuntarily part of a science experiment that is objectively pretty dangerous all things considered. For example, I would never cross th…

Yeah, as a skateboarder in SF a few years ago, the driverless cars for testing were already way more predictable and generally chill than the human Uber drivers, who would do all kinds of crazy, erratic things.

In an ideal world, we'd have physical separation for peds/bikes/skateboards/etc and motorized vehicles, but if we have to share, I'd much rather share with AI than humans.

(That's my pedestrian perspective. As a driver, I love driving and would hate to lose the right. But honestly I think the writing is on the wall, especially in dense urban environments.)

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#36

Post by ghaff »

jccooper wrote: post #20
majormajor wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably more of a mixed bag. Self-driving car fleets probably increase suburbization in the same way that trains created suburbs long ago. Depending on how it breaks out, "more space per person at similar total environmental impact" is a quality of life win but not a climate-change-fighting one. Pedestrian safety and other externalities are probably a big win, still.

I feel like the increase in suburbanization due to self-driving cars is probably pretty small over person-driven cars. Given the low building density that human-driven cars create (read: parking lots) there's some hope that a large change in car parking behavior would lead to lots of infill development.

I don't know. I live in the exurbs anyway and just don't go into the city much. But, if I had effectively a personal driver and I could work in the car, the bar to a 30-60 minute drive in for the evening would be a lot lower for me.

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#37

Post by trgn »

austinkhale wrote: post #21
kccqzy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those of us not located in areas where Waymo is available, do you mind elaborating on why this is your favorite way to get around? As compared to Uber, Lyft, etc.

- The cars are very safe, very conservative drivers - The interiors are nice, well air conditioned and don't smell - You don't have to talk to a person, which I don't always hate but have had some bad experiences. This just removes the roll of the dice from the equation entirely. - They are currently at par or cheaper with Uber/Lyft prices and typically it's faster for the car to arrive - You get to play your own mus…

> - The cars are very safe, very conservative drivers

So great to hear. Seeing videos of self-driving Tesla made me fear for the worst.

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#38

Post by tedivm »

melling wrote: post #3
alphabetting wrote: post #2

> "we are now serving over 10 thousand trips per week to public riders, not including employees. With this latest expansion, we intend for those numbers to accelerate rapidly to 10 times that scale by next summer" they've been pretty cautious on predictions after the AV hype boom and bust a couple years ago. 10x in a year is an ambitious goal.

10,000 trips in electric vehicles. Self-driving EV’s in all major cities would be a big win for the climate and the air quality.

Climate yes, but air quality not by as much as you'd think. Multiple studies have come out showing that the weight of EVs puts more pressure on tires and breaks, which in turn increases the particles they dump in the air.

> As a result, total PM10 emissions from EVs were found to be equal to those of modern ICEVs. PM2.5 emissions were only 1–3% lower for EVs compared to modern ICEVs. Therefore, it could be concluded that the increased popularity of electric vehicles will likely not have a great effect on PM levels. Non-exhaust emissions already account for over 90% of PM10 and 85% of PM2.5 emissions from traffic. These proportions will continue to increase as exhaust standards improve and average vehicle weight increases. Future policy should consequently focus on setting standards for non-exhaust emissions and encouraging weight reduction of all vehicles to significantly reduce PM emissions from traffic.

As the quote mentioned, this can be improved. Lighter batteries, better regenerative breaking, and improvements in tire material would all help.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13522...

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#39

Post by panick21_ »

mertd wrote: post #27
tommoor wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And pedestrian/cyclist safety

To be fair, human drivers don't do terribly well on that front.

Drivers do fine if the infrastructure is designed for humans rather then for cars.

The reason so many people die in US cities is because of policy, not because people can't drive inherently.

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#40

Post by boulos »

For folks that are interested, the discussion at /r/selfdrivingcars [1] picked out some of the salient numbers. Brad Templeton also did his own write up at [2].

I mainly hope that people take away that this service exists now. You can download the app and just use it in Phoenix. As mentioned in the post, we're doing thousands of trips per week of non-employee rides. There are some great (and not so great!) examples posted to /r/selfdrivingcars from time to time if you want to see them.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/137hr3l/wa...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2023/05/04/waymo-...

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