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Waymo seeking about $16B near $110B valuation

bloomberg.com

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Re: Waymo seeking about $16B near $110B valuation

#231

Post by bigstrat2003 »

timerol wrote: post #214
kccqzy wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A car does not cost $350 and $500 per month. If it does, it’s a status symbol, not merely a tool to get from A to B, and therefore it is unfair to compare it against taxi rides. There’s nothing wrong with wanting a nicer more luxurious car for yourself. But it’s just ingenious to compare that against taxis with beaten-up and spartan but reliable cars.

The average monthly payment for a used car in the US in 2025 was $532, according to https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/average-car-paym... . This does not count insurance, taxes, parking, or gas. A status symbol will easily run you $1000/mo. I currently pay $350/mo (including cost of capital), and I don't know how I would pay less for a car that's not actively falling apart. Chevy Spark, manual transmission,…

There's no shot that number isn't being driven up by people purchasing more car than they need. You can get a used car for $10,000 or less, there's no reason one needs to pay $500/mo.

Re: Waymo seeking about $16B near $110B valuation

#232

Post by Arete314159 »

yfdrea wrote: post #131
bandofthehawk wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems weird to me, maybe it's a generational thing. Is it really that bad to share a car with someone? You don't have to talk to them the whole time.

As a woman, while 95% of the ridesharing trips I take are perfectly pleasant and sometimes great with conversation the 5% of rides where you are trapped in a car with a creep asking you extremely off putting questions sours the entire concept of ride sharing for me.

Same. Ever been a vulnerable woman stuck in a car with a man who starts ranting that "nobody wants to date men who aren't rich anymore" and it turns out the driver is angry because the women that are trapped as riders won't go out with him?

Or how about, "Nice place...you live alone here?"

Absolutely would choose the robot.

Re: Waymo seeking about $16B near $110B valuation

#233

Post by UebVar »

belter wrote: post #212
jFriedensreich wrote: post #35

No product had such a fast transition from novelty to "omg i never want to interact with a human again". I feel about 100% less stressed and happier using a waymo or riding motorbike or bicycle next to a waymo than with human drivers. I hope this next phase will bring availability and prices down. We need this in europe.

Waymo is not solving driving , it is closer to a sophisticated Disney Parkland ride. It is running inside a tightly constrained Operational Design Domain: - Geofenced areas - HD pre-mapped roads - Curated infrastructure - Remote ops fallback This is not general autonomy, it is highend automation inside a controlled distribution. The system degrades exactly where humans do not: construction, unmapped lane shifts, poli…

Roads are not solving transportation, they are closer to a sophisticated trace track. Roads are a constrained Operational Design Domain:

- Geofenced areas

- pre-build structures

- Curated infrastructure

- fallback to gravel in times of the inevitable event of maintenance.

This is not general transportation, it is a highend infrastructure inside a controlled environment. The system degrades exactly where humans/horses do not: River crossings, Creeks, steep hillsides, marshes, beaches.

A river flooding a road is not and "edge case", it a usual occurrence, and a problem that roads do robustly solve. It works due to extensive maintenance, not because the asphalt can actually deal with water.

Scaling that beyond a few mapped US suburbs into Europe is a totally different problem. Dont get fooled by Wall Street stock pumping.

Re: Waymo seeking about $16B near $110B valuation

#234

Post by bigstrat2003 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #188
nradov wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most of America there is abundant free parking on private property including homes, stores, and workplaces. That is hardly a subsidy. I understand the argument that dense cities shouldn't have so much free public street parking but there are only a handful of neighborhoods where that even matters.

The "free parking" isn't really free, you just have land that is really cheap devoted to it. And where it isn't...well, American housing prices and rents are increased to pay for them. Street parking matters in almost every neighborhood in Seattle now...since parking on its own is expensive, and you will also have to pay for a few busted windows on your car for the pleasure of free street parking. The highways are he…

> The "free parking" isn't really free, you just have land that is really cheap devoted to it.

When I can park my car in my driveway at no marginal cost to myself, most people (including me) would call that free.

Re: Waymo seeking about $16B near $110B valuation

#235

Post by biztos »

LargeWu wrote: post #163
biztos wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m surprised they don’t have opt-in LLM-based “chatty mode” where you can talk to the AI personality of your choice while riding. Obviously shouldn’t be the same AI that’s deciding whether to run over the child or crash into the oncoming train. [edit: riding not driving]

> LLM-based “chatty mode” where you can talk to the AI personality of your choice I'm genuinely baffled that people would want to do this.

I've been mercilessly downvoted for the suggestion, so at least on HN we can assume it's not what people want. :-)

Re: Waymo seeking about $16B near $110B valuation

#236

Post by nradov »

elijaht wrote: post #209
scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former Lyft driver in SF I felt kinda weird when saw the bit about urination. Like, that's just not a problem. As a driver you just plan ahead as in any other job out there where you're not allowed to disengage at a whim. Pilots and surgeons don't pee in bottles, why would drivers? It's kinda funny when people try to empathize but come up with these creative scenarios of what's challenging. The parts that are ba…

Pilots and surgeons surely have easily accessible bathrooms as a part of their workplace, no? They’re also compensated significantly more and (IMHO) given a lot more dignity In my city public bathrooms are extremely rare and it’s not trivial to find one. I’m sure taxi drivers are a bit more in tune with where they are out of necessity but even then it’s no guarantee they can find convenient parking/be in the right pl…

No. Not for some surgeons at least. Once you start cutting you may have to stay until the job is done so get good at holding it. In the The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe podcast episode Dr. Rahul Seth talks about doing 12 hour surgeries. No breaks, no bathroom, constantly on his feet working.

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/867-the-way-i-heard-it-with-m...

Commercial pilots flying airliners generally have it a bit easier. As for military pilots flying tactical aircraft, well this song might give you an idea of what they face.

https://genius.com/Dos-gringos-12-inch-penis-lyrics

Re: Waymo seeking about $16B near $110B valuation

#237

Post by remus »

paxys wrote: post #82
pu_pe wrote: post #52

It seems like a fair valuation to me. I can see a path for them to approach or surpass Uber's revenue (~$50B) in the future, and I think their technology and brand are actual moats in comparison to all other driverless systems out there.

I'm in the opposite camp. Waymo has neat tech, yes, but already valuing it on par with Uber is absurd considering the sheer scale at which Uber operates. 70 countries, 15K cities, 36 million daily trips. And this isn't counting Uber Eats and other side businesses. Waymo will have to accelerate its operations to the max for the next decade just to catch up. And that's assuming operating at such a scale is even possibl…

No doubt there are significant challenges along the way, but waymo has a real product powered by tech that actually works which could massively change a huge industry. They're also notably more mature than competitors, and have track record of successfully rolling out in a safe way.

Re: Waymo seeking about $16B near $110B valuation

#238

Post by [deleted] »

belter wrote: post #226
guiomie wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I in the Tesla stock subreddit? "Scaling that beyond a few mapped US suburbs into Europe is a totally different problem." If you consider SF and LA suburbs, than Europe is a suburb.

Would you address my other technical comments on what Waymo really is?

[deleted]

Re: Waymo seeking about $16B near $110B valuation

#239

Post by estearum »

ativzzz wrote: post #193
estearum wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber and Lyft are goners, their customers don't care about them and will take Waymos the second they're available. Uber and Lyft will survive exactly to the extent they successfully adopt self-driving.

What's everyone's hate with uber and lyft rides? Over the past 10 years, I've had maybe one ride that was a 1/5. Most drivers either don't talk or are actually very pleasant conversations I will take whichever one is cheaper. Just like now I open up both uber and lyft to see which costs less, I'll open up waymo as well

Have you taken a Waymo?

I don't hate Uber/Lyft (though many in NYC are legitimately horrible, just like taxis)

Waymo is simply an order of magnitude better than the best Uber ride I've ever had

Re: Waymo seeking about $16B near $110B valuation

#240

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

6keZbCECT2uB wrote: post #213
dyauspitr wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there will still be delivery services where you need someone to go into the restaurant and then up to the customers door. That’s going to stick around unless we get to a point where the restaurant is responsible to load up the Waymo and the customer is responsible for getting it out which probably won’t happen anytime soon. The whole delivery market was also mostly created overnight from something that didn’t…

In Miami, there are several competing companies like Coco Robotics which employ human "pilots" to monitor a small fleet of robot delivery boxes where the restaurant deposits the food in the box and the box unlocks with integration into the app. Just figured you'd want to know anytime soon was at least a year ago.

these things are all over the city i live in, too. absolute menace and an abuse of the commons. i've had them literally run into me more than once and i've started physically moving them out of my way when they stop in the middle of the sidewalk.
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