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How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

fortune.com

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Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#41

Post by philkrie »

brrwind wrote: post #35
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much does the average trip go for distances such as your use case? They seem to undercut Uber and Lyft by a hair. Given the longer wait times, and lack of a need to tip, that seems fair. (In San Francisco, they undercut by a wider margin. But human ride shares are more expensive there for a variety of reasons.)

That's not my experience. I've rarely seen a comparably priced ride. They're usually at least 50% more expensive than Uber or Lyft.

In my experience it seems that the price floor is higher, but the ceiling is lower. Short rides (~10 min) that might cost 8-9$ (before tip) on Uber / Lyft, cost $18-20 on Waymo. If I'm going to the other side of San Francisco (say, North Beach to Stonestown), it will be $33-35. I've never seen it in the $40s-50s as I often do with Uber / Lyft for long distance trips during surge pricing. But that's just anecdotal.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#42

Post by boc »

lvspiff wrote: post #23
ripe wrote: post #6

Robotaxis are "a real business"? Maybe in the future, but not yet. From the article: > But even the most bullish believers in autonomous transportation acknowledge the tech still has a ways to go before it’s reliable enough for widespread deployment on U.S. roads.

I was blown away going around Tempe/Scottsdale - Waymos everywhere with people walking around, crossing streets randomly to get to a spring training game, doing bar crawls (it was st patricks day) and what blew me away was they pulled up in front of hotel and even made a quick u-turn to get out of the parking lot. I mean this is really impressive stuff. The future is now imho. I will give tempe/scottsdale credit thou…

Waymos do the same thing in SF where the streets are much denser, traffic is weirder, hills are way steeper, and the roads aren't in perfect shape by any means. The amount of impressive navigation I've seen around delivery trucks, weird construction patterns, etc has been pretty wild. They seem way ahead of the other options on the road.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#44

Post by drewg123 »

ripe wrote: post #6

Robotaxis are "a real business"? Maybe in the future, but not yet. From the article: > But even the most bullish believers in autonomous transportation acknowledge the tech still has a ways to go before it’s reliable enough for widespread deployment on U.S. roads.

I took one in Chandler last year, and it was amazing. Especially in combination with my Tesla and its "Full Self Driving". It kept up with traffic, turned confidently, yielded to pedestrians, etc.

The biggest (only?) complaint I had is that it would not pickup/dropoff at the curb at our hotel. So if it was raining, we'd have had to walk out in the rain to meet the car in a parking spot.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#45

Post by jonathanberger »

ripe wrote: post #6

Robotaxis are "a real business"? Maybe in the future, but not yet. From the article: > But even the most bullish believers in autonomous transportation acknowledge the tech still has a ways to go before it’s reliable enough for widespread deployment on U.S. roads.

Does a business have to be widely deployed or profitable to be real? The public and private capital markets say "no". If you were to ignore any business that isn't widely available you'd miss the beginning of both Apple and Facebook.

Waymo is a real business serving 50,000 rides each week delivering paying customers to their destination. If you haven't tried it yet, the product is amazing. Private, doesn't cancel, safe, and smooth. I will never take Uber again if I have the choice.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#46

Post by upwardbound »

jeffbee wrote: post #20
choppaface wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo has notably escaped any investigation of the "Prius vs Camry" crash induced during unsafe testing done in pursuit of a demo https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-steal... > The car went onto a freeway, where it travelled past an on-ramp. According to people with knowledge of events that day, the Prius accidentally boxed in another vehicle, a Camry. A human driver could easily have handled the s…

I am having trouble imagining this scenario in a way that makes Waymo look as bad as you imply. It sounds like the human-driven vehicle if it was "boxed in" on an on-ramp needed to slow and merge, rather than racing to pass on the right, running off the road, and causing a spectacular single-vehicle wreck. The way it's described in that paragraph seems to be ironclad proof of the need to promptly relieve humans of dr…

It doesn't make the tech look bad, but to me it makes the safety driver & the other executive look callous and uncaring.

> They didn’t go back to check on the other driver or to see if anyone else had been hurt

They should have made sure the driver was okay.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#47

Post by ein0p »

NullHypothesist wrote: post #43
ein0p wrote: post #33

Wait till activists start setting SDCs on fire before calling it a “real business”.

No need to wait... https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/11/24069251/waymo-driverless...

Exactly. And there’s no dude there to prevent it.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#48

Post by hnav »

jseliger wrote: post #3

I just left a version of this in another thread—I live in Phoenix and now take Waymo regularly, and it seems like we're close to a world in which most people take self-driving cars most of the time, crash rates plummet, and these kinds of articles come to resemble articles from 1910 about horse-related problems. Humans suck at driving: https://jakeseliger.com/2019/12/16/maybe-cars-are-just-reall... Waymos avoid many…

The olfactory problem with waymos is that if someone gets in one dirty or foul smelling there isn't a driver to kick them out. Waymos are starting to get more ridership and some of those people are going to be absolute pigs. I gave feedback to Waymo about a recent ride where the entire car smelled like a fat, unwashed ass and the best case scenario there is that they took the car out of rotation immediately, the rider right before me left it that way and that the rider will be identified after several instances of those reports. The reality is probably that the car picked up several riders after me until one reported a problem mid-ride.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#49

Post by 8note »

robotnikman wrote: post #9
xvedejas wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're the present here in SF, driving every day and more safely than the humans do. And as a human driver, I can testify that these streets are not particularly easy to drive on.

They are here in the Phoenix area too and I have not seen and issues with them. However, we are blessed by sunny weather 99% of the time. I think the biggest challenges will be having them drive in adverse weather conditions present throughout the rest of the country, such as blizzards, hail, torrential rain, dense fog.

I don't think blizzards, hail, torrential rain, and dense fog will be particularly challenging for waymos, at least not keeping the card driving in a controlled a predictable state.

The hard thing is that every other human car acts randomly because they don't say, have winter tires, and unlike waymo, don't have the very quick control loop.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#50

Post by clpm4j »

a0986373 wrote: post #29
clpm4j wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they're actually awesome. 'Waymo' has replaced 'Uber' in my vocabulary, e.g. "Let's just Waymo there".

How much does the average trip go for distances such as your use case?

On average, within SF (say, a 3-4 mile trip), is typically ~$20. Peak times on Friday or Saturday evenings can definitely exceed $35, but I've yet to have any ride go above $50.
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