Not "people". Early adopters willing to pay the early adopter tax.
By the way, why hasn't all this automation triggered lower prices for anything? Why doesn't the self checkout at a supermarket give you a discount for doing their job?
Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway
531–540 of 916 posts
Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway
#532Earlier quoted context omitted.
The other day I almost got ran over by an old lady in her old Volvo wagon at a stop sign. She seemed to have gotten confused a little and was turning left but couldn't figure out the right move to make. People behind her honked and she decided to just go for it. I happened to be in the crosswalk and just happened to look over at the honking, and saw her coming, so managed to jump out of her way. She was easily over 9…
this is 10000% the wrong approach— the approach is to build better, more walkable cities, with better zoning, and public transit so elderly or disabled people aren’t left out of society. these people shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a car; to me one of the biggest annoyances with american life
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Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway
#533Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In Chatham County, the living wage per hour necessary for one adult with no children is $22.46 while those with one kid is $35.70, two kids is $43.45, and three kids is $56.93. https://www.savannahnow.com/story/news/2024/12/09/what-is-a-...
So that's fine then? A family of four with both parents working at $23.66/hr each is $3.87/hr above that level. Unless you're saying "starvation wage" and "living wage" are the same thing, which I don't think is a reasonable characterization. Only problem is if they decide to have a third kid, or if you have a single parent with one or more kids. And while I get that unforeseen things happen to people that lower thei…
There are some child care costs for two working adults, so the calculator wants about 15% more money in that case, but yes it says that wage is roughly enough for two adults and two children.
Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway
#534Earlier quoted context omitted.
jags and ioniqs are a midway stop for sure. there's no need to have a seat you can't use with a steering wheel and windows that are not totally blacked out. the final product would probably resemble something closer to Cruise One concept.
the next step has already been announced. the holdup is regulatory approval for less-conventional vehicles. https://insideevs.com/photos/802937/waymo-zeekr-robotaxi/#69...
Yeah I know about Geely and under current circumstances I categorize this as "never gonna happen". There's probably better chance of partnering with GM at this point...
Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway
#535Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why is "that person gets to be extraordinarily wealthy" for inventing the future rather than "we all chipped in so we could all benefit" for inventing the future? Well obviously we want a lot of the benefit to be the latter. But if you don't have some of the former, then almost no multi-billion-dollar-cost inventions get made in the first place.
Yuri Gagarin was the first man in orbit, and that was absolutely a multi-billion dollar invention. Alan Turing didn't pursue his ideas because he wanted to get wealth beyond imagining. Mondragon makes billions of dollars annually, and strongly limits executive pay. I think it's very reasonable to assume that we can, we have historically, and currently do, make multi-billion dollar investments for the good of all. The…
> Yuri Gagarin was the first man in orbit, and that was absolutely a multi-billion dollar invention.
That was government-funded. Most projects aren't that lucky. And are any governments funding self-driving cars?
> Alan Turing didn't pursue his ideas because he wanted to get wealth beyond imagining.
I said multi billion dollar cost. Not multi billion dollar benefit. He's not an example.
> Mondragon makes billions of dollars annually, and strongly limits executive pay.
Have they made any inventions that required a billion dollars or more? Ten billion?
But you saying "makes billions" is exactly what I'm talking about. It's great that they don't pay a lot of money to executives and the workers own things. But the company invested money and the company profited. It didn't all go to making the world a better place.
You avoid particularly wealthy people when a coop can self-fund, but the coop is still trying to profit off the result of the research. And if a risky research project ever can't be self-funded, then whatever/whoever makes the loan might make a huge profit. If that incentive isn't there, the loan doesn't happen and the research doesn't happen.
> I think it's very reasonable to assume that we can, we have historically, and currently do, make multi-billion dollar investments for the good of all. The idea that it requires some profit incentive is, imo, a pernicious falsehood.
It doesn't require it, but if you make it possible to profit off research then you end up with much more money spent on research.
Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway
#536At least half my recent rides in Ubers/Lyft have been drivers that shouldn’t be on the road, I’d happily pay more for a Waymo.
i've had quite a few experiences with AWFUL uber drivers as well. i think it would be beneficial for uber to require some sort of ODB monitoring like some insurance companies do. one time on a trip to the airport, i almost had the driver pull over on the side of the road to let me know. i was GENUINELY scared by her driving.
Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway
#537I mix and match but I’ll take a Waymo if it’s 1. Literally zero variance. Every car is the same. Every driver is the same style. If it says it’ll be there in 7 minutes it will be 7, not 5 and not 10. 2. A jaguar SUV is a premium vehicle. It’s comparable to an Uber black not a regular Uber. 3. It’s so child friendly. My son can make all the noise he wants and I can take time loading him in without a driver being impat…
I’m seeing more of them with trash. Last one I took had a rolled up bundle of used bandages.
People are excited by driverless cars but it also means a car with no social barriers and no person who considers the cars condition important. For now they’re well surveilled and a premium vehicle. Soon they will be filthy pods in a race to the bottom with all the charm of a public bathroom. They’ll be cheap, but you’ll get what you pay for. Private driverless cars will be the premium alternative.
Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway
#538Earlier quoted context omitted.
$3 isn't this kind of a small problem? I miss rideshare service, in Denmark we have mess of expensive high quality taxis that you cannot get hold of when you need one.
$3 is small enough that almost everyone will just eat the cost. I have a theory that they do this intentionally in some things(well Uber I've never used lift). Almost every time I order food and something is wrong or missing they'll give me a refund that is $2-3 off what it should be. Like if I order a $5 item and it's missing their service will refund me $2. At that point I can chose to spend literally an hour going…
Funny you say this, a year or two ago I contacted Amazon about adjusting the price for something I had ordered the day prior, since it went on sale. It hadn't shipped yet, and they said no problem, we'll refund you the $7 price difference - but we can't do that until the item arrives, just contact us when it does.
So I get the item, contact support for my price match and they say sorry, we can only give you $5 back. I get upset because that's not what I was told, and have a screenshot of the chat to prove it.
We went back and forth forever, I got more and more angry and eventually returned the item for the full amount, and prime had just recently renewed and was in the refund window, so I got a refund for that.
Unfortunately I need Prime where I live, so I signed up for it again a few days later, but used a free trial month.
The whole thing was a giant waste of time, and felt very "optimized".
Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway
#539Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been picked up multiple times by Uber drivers who have, essentially, bragged? about being drunk or high. I've also had multiple drivers in multiple countries try to sell me drugs. I also once had a driver in Chile who, somehow, micro-slept in stop and go traffic every time the car was stopped (which, was actually fascinating, and would've been very concerning if we ever got going more than like 10 mph). Women al…
On the upside, I've had Uber drivers in multiple countries help me buy drugs. Waymo hasn't hooked me up even once.
Baha
Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway
#540Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the thing that people don't realize about autonomous AI. It's not primarily about saving money. Autonomous taxis are superior to Uber and yellow cabs. It's a better experience, and it's far safer. Autonomous cars aren't cheaper, they're better. When AI agents replace human jobs, any cost savings is secondary. A coding job where the AI does most of the grunt work is superior to a job where humans do everything…
(All this assumes some some not-yet-here future where "AI agents" are less flaky than today's LLMs.) Things like "call center jobs" are where "superior" gets muddy. They can be superior for the business. The business does not want to spend money. Now they aren't paying a person, and they have to worry less about a sob story convincing their agent to make an exception. Health insurance company, for instance, where the…
> And most of us aren't the megacorp-owners here. We're the customers.
Actually, you're not.
In the US, something like 40% of the stock market is owned by pension funds [0], and another chunk directly by individual savers.
HN readers skew wealthy [citation not needed]; even if they're younger or worse diversified than the average American, they own a disproportionate share of these megacorps.
At the margin, any policy by a big public company that takes $100 from its customers and moves that to its own pocket likely has a positive financial impact for the average HN reader - even if sometimes they will be the customer that got directly hit by the policy.
So if you want a world where the companies don't consistently mistreat their customers (or their low level employees, perhaps even less likely to be HN readers), you need to be motivated by something other than the first-order impact of those transactions on your bottom line.
[0] https://manhattan.institute/article/who-owns-the-stock-marke...