411–420 of 424 posts
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> Waymo is public transport Is it? Doesn't "public transit" at least somewhat imply that it's a business that has to operate under the rules of some democratically elected institution? Waymo will ban you, price you differently based on who/where/when you are, etc. I wouldn't expect any of that from "public transit".
People can (and should) be banned from public transit, too.
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I really don't see how a human-centered driving company survives with something that is near fully automated and new "drivers" can just be ordered up from Stellantis or whomever, provisioned, and sent on the road. The scaling laws just don't match up. I say "near fully automated" because there's loads of operations involved, including human remote fleet management for when cars get stuck. But even that doesn't scale…
What is the cost in SF? This early review says the same: https://archive.ph/7mPWk So I don't see the point of theorizing, when we can get real-world feedback from customers.
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>I live in Europe in a village of about 1500 people are there is no usable public transport (2 buses a day). and how would waymo fix this? Waymo is still a private business and needs to weigh the costs of deploying to a smaller town vs. simply not supporting that range. It's the same issue as government.
Automated vehicles will enable smaller buses that drive themselves and make serving these places profitable to service. Automated taxi services like Waymo also ultimately be cheaper too.
https://chikatoku.enjoytokyo.jp/en/spot/willer_ikebukuro.htm...
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What is the cost in SF? This early review says the same: https://archive.ph/7mPWk So I don't see the point of theorizing, when we can get real-world feedback from customers.
You're comparing costs now ? The price for human powered uber's will always increase based on labor costs. The price to put an autonomous vehicle on the road and manage it will most likely decrease as more are deployed and Waymo gets better at operating them. Time will tell, but Uber will not last once Waymo gets good at scaling this stuff.
I'm comparing costs in other comments in this thread.
as I said, if Waymo is actually charging money now, then real data is much more credible than a theoretical analysis like yours.
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Labor cost pretty much always increases while the cost of research technology decreases once it encounters economies of scale. A car today at the admittedly high cost estimate of $1M will “pay itself off” versus your labor estimate in less than 8 years. Humans don’t get paid off and then work for free afterwards.
A taxi doesn't have a lifespan of 8 years, and note that while I don't think that a Waymo car costs anything like $1M, it's also not actually the case that you pay taxi drivers $140k per year. I see very little to suggest that a Waymo car costs less all-in over the course of about two years than a Prius and an Uber driver does, and that's the much more relevant comparison. Nothing to say that this couldn't change in…
$190k - $80k for a jaguar ipace leaves $110k per vehicle for Waymo to work with, multiplied by the size of their fleet. How much do we want to figure a pile of sensors, computer hardware, and custom housings to cost? Minus insurance and electricity, which I don't know how much to figure and the answer is yeah I don't know. $110k over 2 years doesn't seem like that much, but multiplied across a sizable fleet it adds up. I'm sure they're scaling up as fast as they can.
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As long as there is competition the prices will be low (eventually). Labor is almost always the most expensive part of any service and these technologies reduce the need for labor considerably.
That's only true if there's competition with similar costs, though. Uber and Lyft can't reduce prices without collapsing, so Waymo has no incentive to charge anything less than what they charge minus one cent and they'll have all the demand they can handle.
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I don't know about bringing down costs. The amount of money that's been invested in this wants to get paid back, so they're gonna be charging as money they can for this to be worth it.
If apple spent 10B on their car, I wouldn't be surprised if Waymo spent 50 or 100 over 15 years and they invented the modern robotaxi. I think they've earned the ability to charge whatever they like. I'd also happily pay more than Uber rides whenever it comes to my area. Riding a couple in Arizona was amazing.
They can charge what people will pay, not whatever they want.
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Labor cost pretty much always increases while the cost of research technology decreases once it encounters economies of scale. A car today at the admittedly high cost estimate of $1M will “pay itself off” versus your labor estimate in less than 8 years. Humans don’t get paid off and then work for free afterwards.
A taxi doesn't have a lifespan of 8 years, and note that while I don't think that a Waymo car costs anything like $1M, it's also not actually the case that you pay taxi drivers $140k per year. I see very little to suggest that a Waymo car costs less all-in over the course of about two years than a Prius and an Uber driver does, and that's the much more relevant comparison. Nothing to say that this couldn't change in…
why is 2 years the relevant timeframe?
Just yesterday, walking in the inner sunset neighborhood of SF, I saw an old lady in a 1980s Volvo come to a 4-way stop. She looked really old, as in probably even 90+. She wasn't sure about the rules of the stop sign: she came to the stop and was hesitating to go. Other cars were waiting for her and some of them started just going through, creating a very dangerous situation. Eventually she mustered the courage to j…
someone needs to get the seniors in and out of the cars...
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It is still a fun novelty mode of ride with limited supply and is priced accordingly and is not a mass transport option yet. Once the supply of cars rises the prices will fall to establish a new equilibrium hopefully much lower than Uber.
There are tons of waymos, pretty much everywhere you look. I think it's beyond the novelty stage now.