61–70 of 83 posts
“Meet Sustainability Goals: Waymo’s fully electric fleet helps organizations advance their sustainability targets” Taking a private taxi to commute to work or school is easily the worst thing you can do environmentally in a city. Doesn’t really matter that you’re not burning dinosaur juice.
Worse than owning a large single family home that lowers density and pushes everyone further from their destinations?
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That doesn't seem right. Taking your own car, which you park at both ends of the trip, is clearly worse from a vehicle utilization and land use standpoint. A Waymo that takes a dozen trips a day and never parks on the street seems obviously superior.
I think the point is it's green washing. True sustainability is public transit, or biking or walking. This is just a line item got a company to blast as sustainability in marketing. This will let Waymo absorb some money from green washing slush funds.
Free your mind. Cost per passenger mile is atrocious for most US transit systems. All that cost equals carbon: concrete, steel, fuel, salaries, etc.
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Bus gets me from 50m from my house to 50m from my office. How is that not doing the last mile?
That's very fortunate or very strategic of you to choose your home and workplace to work so well with the bus routes. Most people in the US do not have a bus stop within 50 meters of their home and workplace (and certainly not a single bus line that operates frequently at all times needed).
Inside a city is a different matter.
(See this for an example of what a pretty good transport setup can give you: https://www.lothianbuses.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/2509... )
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The next generation vehicle is much bigger https://waymo.com/blog/2024/08/meet-the-6th-generation-waymo...
That doesn't seem to say anything about the seating capacity?
Why are they not hyper-focused on scaling the number of vehicles on the road now that they have a working system? Is Waymo afraid of flooding the supply and crashing prices? Are they too expensive to build/maintain to justify a lower price point? What is going on, if you have PMF the logical next step is scale.
I think I remember them targeting 1M rides/week in 2026.
To me the real challenge is just getting local communities to allow Waymo. I live in Oakland and am not holding my breath.
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Is all that showering better or worse for the environment than using more appropriate transport in the first place?
The bike is in fact the more appropriate transport for moving a 200lb person than a 5000lb vehicle. Literally 95% of the energy being consumed is just to move the damned vehicle around, not to do anything productive with it.
Showering uses hot water and you also must change clothes, which also require cleaning. If you are doing this twice per day in addition to someone using some other means of transportation there is a non trivial energy cost involved.
If the car propulsion is non fossil fuel based then the car wins because you are using much less water.
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While I agree that it’s kinda unpleasant to get all sweaty before work, many larger corporations have offices (usually with gyms) have locker rooms and showers to support bikers. While I’m able to take transit, many of my coworkers do bike+shower at the office for commuting.
Is all that showering better or worse for the environment than using more appropriate transport in the first place?
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That's very fortunate or very strategic of you to choose your home and workplace to work so well with the bus routes. Most people in the US do not have a bus stop within 50 meters of their home and workplace (and certainly not a single bus line that operates frequently at all times needed).
Absolutely. Outside of cities personal car-based makes a lot of sense. Inside a city is a different matter. (See this for an example of what a pretty good transport setup can give you: https://www.lothianbuses.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/2509... )
Why are they not hyper-focused on scaling the number of vehicles on the road now that they have a working system? Is Waymo afraid of flooding the supply and crashing prices? Are they too expensive to build/maintain to justify a lower price point? What is going on, if you have PMF the logical next step is scale.
Announced: * Dallas * Denver * Miami * Seattle * Washington, DC * New York City * San Diego * Las Vegas * Philadelphia * London * Tokyo
Seems like they are definitely scaling up...