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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

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the context of ride sharing, though, it's likely that you spend most of the time in most rides going much slower than the ideal top speed. Most ride shares are heavily biased towards city driving with frequent stops and relatively low speed limits.

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

#82

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.

> aerodynamic drag is by far the biggest source of efficiency loss.

Rolling resistance is a bigger source of loss under 30 mph.

> The most efficient traversal for a fixed time interval is fast acceleration / deceleration with a reduced top speed

Wouldn't it be increasing speed for half the trip and decreasing it for the other half?

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

#83
post #72
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.

> 2 car lengths at 80 mph is not ok.

Definitely. 2 seconds is OK, but 3 is better

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

#84
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “consistently clean” part won’t last, that’s just because they’re new. In 2010 “they’re consistently clean” was an advantage of Ubers over yellow cabs, which of course is gone now. But I agree with the rest of this.

My only experience with a dirty Waymo was smell. I reported it in app and got a message they recalled it to be cleaned. I think the fact they can just take a car out of rotation and to the hub which probably has dedicated cleaning staff is a big reason it will last. Your average uber driver is desperate to work. I’ve seen a driver open his trunk and clean up urine from a drunk female passenger he just dropped off in…

> My only experience with a dirty Waymo was smell.

Also a plus that you can roll down all the windows in a Waymo if you want to.

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

#85
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what all the Waymo's look like. They did some testing in Chrysler minivans, now they're testing in BYD vehicles. But the rides are in those Jaguars (ya know, the ones burning in LA).

> now they're testing in BYD vehicles I hadn't heard that. Did you mean Geely Zeekr? https://waymo.com/blog/2021/12/expanding-our-waymo-one-fleet...

Hmm. That’s the vehicle I saw in SF but when I looked it up I thought I read BYD. But maybe I got that totally wrong.

EDIT: Yes you’re def right. I looked around a little more and there’s no support for my BYD memory. Geely it is.

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

#88
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…

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.

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

#89

I once went to a remote town in Maryland that had only one uber driver. Imagine how beautiful a Waymo machine would work there.

Uber barely operates in huge swaths of the US. I've been in parts of Idaho and Kansas where wait times during the day can be a half an hour and after a certain hour no drivers are available at all. And the drivers who operate in these areas tend to be far less experienced/professional than in denser areas (to put it politely). Waymo solves all of this with just a handful of cars in each county.
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