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Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway

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Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway

#71

Post by bastawhiz »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #69
bastawhiz wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A dime of commercially priced electricity is around a kWh depending on where you are. That'll take a car a lot further than you think, and the more aggressively you drive the more electricity gets used. The most efficient way to drive is the flattest, most leisurely route. The only way aggressive driving becomes profitable is when you've exhausted your supply of cars. Even then, it's not clear to me that you'd increa…

Electric engines are very efficient; aerodynamic drag is by far the biggest source of efficiency loss. The most efficient traversal for a fixed time interval is fast acceleration / deceleration with a reduced top speed. OTOH the most efficient for same time interval for a gas vehicle would be a slightly higher top speed but lower acceleration / deceleration.

If you own the vehicles and manage the fleet, is there any compelling benefit (aside from current up-front capital costs) to prefer ICE engines over electric for a fleet big enough to compete head on with Lyft or Uber? Even the additional uptime per vehicle thanks to lower ongoing maintenance is a compelling enough reason to jump for EVs.

Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway

#72

Post by thunky »

pkrecker wrote: post #6

I'm willing to pay more for a better ride experience: * Waymos are all the same. I underrated the value of this until I started taking Waymo more often. * I can control the music and volume with my phone. * I can listen to YouTube or take a call without AirPods. Sometimes I even hotspot and do some work. But most importantly Waymos all _drive_ the same way. I have had some really perplexing Uber drivers, either drivi…

> just driving dangerously

Why don't we have a feature to brake or at least beep when tailgating? 2 car lengths at 80 mph is not ok.

Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway

#73

Post by robocat »

bastawhiz wrote: post #68
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. Waymo doesn’t make me feel car sick, while aggressiveness-incentivized uber/lyft drivers do. Thinking of incentives, I wonder what happens when self driving is “solved” to the point they can start nickel and dime optimizing. I wonder if waymo starts driving overly aggressively at that point too.

A dime of commercially priced electricity is around a kWh depending on where you are. That'll take a car a lot further than you think, and the more aggressively you drive the more electricity gets used. The most efficient way to drive is the flattest, most leisurely route. The only way aggressive driving becomes profitable is when you've exhausted your supply of cars. Even then, it's not clear to me that you'd increa…

If aggressive driving is 5% faster, then your expensive investment (the cars and the business) might get a few percent better utilisation (assuming liabilities don't increase much). More likely to see aggressive driving on way to pickup?

Capital costs matter, and how quickly you get ROI matters.

Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway

#74

Post by dieortin »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #69
bastawhiz wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A dime of commercially priced electricity is around a kWh depending on where you are. That'll take a car a lot further than you think, and the more aggressively you drive the more electricity gets used. The most efficient way to drive is the flattest, most leisurely route. The only way aggressive driving becomes profitable is when you've exhausted your supply of cars. Even then, it's not clear to me that you'd increa…

Electric engines are very efficient; aerodynamic drag is by far the biggest source of efficiency loss. The most efficient traversal for a fixed time interval is fast acceleration / deceleration with a reduced top speed. OTOH the most efficient for same time interval for a gas vehicle would be a slightly higher top speed but lower acceleration / deceleration.

Why would fast acceleration and deceleration be more efficient? When you drive an electric car it’s usually the opposite: fast acceleration drains the battery fast, and slow deceleration allows for better regenerative braking without having to use the actual brakes.

Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway

#75

Post by bryanlarsen »

dieortin wrote: post #74
bryanlarsen wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric engines are very efficient; aerodynamic drag is by far the biggest source of efficiency loss. The most efficient traversal for a fixed time interval is fast acceleration / deceleration with a reduced top speed. OTOH the most efficient for same time interval for a gas vehicle would be a slightly higher top speed but lower acceleration / deceleration.

Why would fast acceleration and deceleration be more efficient? When you drive an electric car it’s usually the opposite: fast acceleration drains the battery fast, and slow deceleration allows for better regenerative braking without having to use the actual brakes.

Because it lets you use a lower top speed to maintain the same trip time. If you have an EV, you know just how much a few extra mph drops the range.

And obviously it's within reason -- if you're shredding tires, you're wasting a lot of energy doing that.

Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway

#76

Post by mstridder1 »

nineplay wrote: post #61
atlasunshrugged wrote: post #33

As a man I thankfully haven't ever really felt unsafe (in this way anyways, definitely some bad/distracted Uber drivers) but I could see women or kids finding Waymos to be a safer overall experience worth a premium

Recently my daughter and I had to take a Uber home from airport at 11pm. I did not like the driver and I did not like the situation and I seriously was considering exit plans if he started going off the normal route. The next time I had to take a late Uber I paid up for Uber Premium, which is maybe imperfect reasoning but the driver was pleasant and polite and didn't give any bad vibes.

[flagged]

Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway

#77

Post by tomhow »

mstridder1 wrote: post #76
nineplay wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently my daughter and I had to take a Uber home from airport at 11pm. I did not like the driver and I did not like the situation and I seriously was considering exit plans if he started going off the normal route. The next time I had to take a late Uber I paid up for Uber Premium, which is maybe imperfect reasoning but the driver was pleasant and polite and didn't give any bad vibes.

[flagged]

Please don't attack people like this on Hacker News. It's not what the site is for and it destroys what it is for. Please read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway

#78

Post by nineplay »

mstridder1 wrote: post #76
nineplay wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently my daughter and I had to take a Uber home from airport at 11pm. I did not like the driver and I did not like the situation and I seriously was considering exit plans if he started going off the normal route. The next time I had to take a late Uber I paid up for Uber Premium, which is maybe imperfect reasoning but the driver was pleasant and polite and didn't give any bad vibes.

[flagged]

I'm genuinely curious why my comment made you think I've ever claimed to be not racist, falsely or not.

Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway

#80

Post by bastawhiz »

robocat wrote: post #73
bastawhiz wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A dime of commercially priced electricity is around a kWh depending on where you are. That'll take a car a lot further than you think, and the more aggressively you drive the more electricity gets used. The most efficient way to drive is the flattest, most leisurely route. The only way aggressive driving becomes profitable is when you've exhausted your supply of cars. Even then, it's not clear to me that you'd increa…

If aggressive driving is 5% faster, then your expensive investment (the cars and the business) might get a few percent better utilisation (assuming liabilities don't increase much). More likely to see aggressive driving on way to pickup? Capital costs matter, and how quickly you get ROI matters.

5% higher velocity doesn't mean arriving at your destination 5% sooner. A car traveling 52.5mph will complete a trip (absent acceleration/deceleration/stops) of 3 miles only about 10 seconds faster than a car traveling 50mph. That's the upper bound, because cars have to stop. The speed is not the efficiency bottleneck, not by a long shot.

Even if you saved thirty seconds on each ride throughout a day, that doesn't translate to more profit. It translates to the ability to take on extra rides. Which in total, is maybe one or two. You're talking about an extra $30 or so in revenue. Subtract off normal overhead and you're looking at maybe ten dollars of extra profit per vehicle per day at best.

You're also assuming the service runs at capacity at all times. You will infrequently be at capacity. Arriving ten seconds sooner doesn't matter if you just have another car you can dispatch for another rider, and optimizing how and when to bring cars in and out of service becomes the bottleneck.

There are so many inefficient aspects of a naively designed ride sharing service that can be optimized for real meaningful profit. And almost all of those things can be done without changing the way the car handles in any way. Just making sure you have vehicles in the right places at the right times, or fueling vehicles at more opportune times, or choosing more optimal pickup and drop-off locations could increase the number of rides you can perform, which is what translates into profit.

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