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Next stop: Miami

waymo.com

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Re: Next stop: Miami

#31

Post by mg »

ezfe wrote: post #30
mg wrote: post #23

our service – which already provides over 150,000 trips per week across Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Austin Interesting. That's about 8 million rides per year. I wonder how close they are to being profitable? As soon as they are getting close to being profitable, they will probably scale this up super fast. I don't know how much Google invested into Waymo so far. Something like $10B? If they at some point…

Profitable from an operations perspective? Surely close since they charge the same order of magnitude as an Uber/Lyft and have fewer than one driver per vehicle (monitoring the vehicles).

We have to add the deprecation and maintenance of the car.

Plus I guess they need high resolution maps? Not sure if that is a significant cost factor.

Re: Next stop: Miami

#32

Post by jeffbee »

lopkeny12ko wrote: post #10

Jaguar discontinued the I-PACE and presumably does not manufacture them anymore. It must be the case that Waymo is cannibalizing their fleet capacity from other markets for every new city launch.

Jaguar did not manufacture the I-Pace at all. It was made by Steyr, who also built a ton of them for Waymo.

Re: Next stop: Miami

#33

Post by lnsru »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #22
simpleintheory wrote: post #4

I think the most interesting part is that the article says that Waymo's handing its operations to Moove. It seems like Waymo's trying to become a software provider while having other companies handle the capital-intensive parts.

Compared to software, hardware sucks. Mother nature OS is by far the worst to develop for.

It does not suck! Hardware just barely works.

I design motherboards for industrial computers for living. Last gem: radio module draws 5 amps while transmitting instead of specified 2 amps. Trust nobody!

Re: Next stop: Miami

#34

Post by xnx »

simpleintheory wrote: post #4

I think the most interesting part is that the article says that Waymo's handing its operations to Moove. It seems like Waymo's trying to become a software provider while having other companies handle the capital-intensive parts.

> having other companies handle the capital-intensive parts.

Waymo definitely wants to outsource the areas where they don't have special expertise (i.e. Waymo is 100x better at driving, but not 100x better at washing and vacuuming cars). I'm not sure how capital-intensive regional operations are. The vehicles are definitely the largest capital expense. This is more like an AirBnB property owner hiring a cleaning service.

Re: Next stop: Miami

#35

Post by ecesena »

fngjdflmdflg wrote: post #17

This is important if nothing else because Miami sees much more rain than SF and Phoenix: Miami: 57 in. ( https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/us-climate-normals/#dataset... SF: 25 in. ( https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/us-climate-normals/#dataset... ) Phoenix: 7 in. ( https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/us-climate-normals/#dataset... )

Interesting random fact: when it rains, waymo turns on the windshield wipers

Re: Next stop: Miami

#36

Post by jeffbee »

There were three things in Waymo's latest CPUC filing that interested me. First, through the end of August, Los Angeles still irrelevant. Over 85% of their California rides were still in SF. Second, ridership in SF doubled in 90 days without a significant expansion in either vehicles or trips per service hour, but they had the cars out on the road more hours every day. Third, the geographic concentration of their rides is extreme, with a large fraction of trips starting near either the Ferry Building or Fisherman's Wharf, which suggests that it is popular with and useful to tourists.

Re: Next stop: Miami

#37

Post by newfocogi »

bbor wrote: post #24
fngjdflmdflg wrote: post #17

This is important if nothing else because Miami sees much more rain than SF and Phoenix: Miami: 57 in. ( https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/us-climate-normals/#dataset... SF: 25 in. ( https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/us-climate-normals/#dataset... ) Phoenix: 7 in. ( https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/us-climate-normals/#dataset... )

Good point! Though also worth mentioning that they're already in Atlanta, which gets ~50in (and 59in so far this year, despite the mind-bending "first October without rain in recorded history")

I think they've announced they're headed to Atlanta in early 2025. So they may be testing there, but I don't believe they are at GA in GA :)

Re: Next stop: Miami

#39

Post by fngjdflmdflg »

bbor wrote: post #24
fngjdflmdflg wrote: post #17

This is important if nothing else because Miami sees much more rain than SF and Phoenix: Miami: 57 in. ( https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/us-climate-normals/#dataset... SF: 25 in. ( https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/us-climate-normals/#dataset... ) Phoenix: 7 in. ( https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/us-climate-normals/#dataset... )

Good point! Though also worth mentioning that they're already in Atlanta, which gets ~50in (and 59in so far this year, despite the mind-bending "first October without rain in recorded history")

Good point, I guess I missed when that happened. Looking at some news sites and Waymo's blog, it seems that they are testing in Atlanta and will start accepting customers in 2025.[0]

>It currently operates fleets of driverless cars in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and Phoenix. It also plans to launch a robotaxi service in Atlanta in an exclusive partnership with Uber.[1]

[0] https://waymo.com/blog/2024/09/waymo-and-uber-expand-partner...

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/5/24313346/waymo-miami-robo...

Re: Next stop: Miami

#40

Post by kieranmaine »

simpleintheory wrote: post #4

I think the most interesting part is that the article says that Waymo's handing its operations to Moove. It seems like Waymo's trying to become a software provider while having other companies handle the capital-intensive parts.

This seems much more scaleable. Car share services (eg. Evo in Vancouver) seem like good partners as they already have the fleet management services and a recognizable (and hopefully trusted) brand.

I'm not sure about other car share services work, but in the case of Evo they have existing relationships with the cities that make up Metro Vancouver. I wonder if this would ease rollout as you'd already know all the required people to talk to within municipal government?

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