22 ms·

It will be interesting to see how Lyft's partnership with Waymo evolves given this tech announcement and Waymo's acknowledgment that they plan to offer their ow

by a9a 9y ago

It will be interesting to see how Lyft's partnership with Waymo evolves given this tech announcement and Waymo's acknowledgment that they plan to offer their own ridesharing service. Lyft's approach to self-driving partnerships in general seems to rest on the assumption that self-driving providers will catch up to each other before any of them can fully handle everything a human driver can do. If this assumption is correct, Lyft ends up in the great position of being compatible with all major self-driving providers before any of them can feasibly launch a standalone service without Lyft's driver network (who wants to take a car service that doesn't take you downtown? Or doesn't work in the rain?). Ideally, this means Lyft can negotiate favorable terms with all the providers and maintain their position as marketplace brokering between riders and ride providers (either human or robot). But, if this announcement means Waymo is truly way ahead of the competition, is Lyft aiding and abetting its own demise by covering Waymo's short-term holes (weather, urban areas, etc) up until the day that Waymo can cut Lyft out and run their own service? If Waymo is the only self-driving game in town, and they solve the urban case, why do they need Lyft? I wonder if we'll see any tension develop between the two if leadership at Lyft starts to get concerned about this scenario being a likely outcome.

sudhirj 9y ago
Think it's unlikely that Waymo will build out and operate a full fledged ride service - there's a lot of other factors to work out like scheduling, routing, supply-demand management, optimal vehicle distribution, pooling etc that they could just delegate to Lyft for. They might just build a service to the extent of push a button and a vehicle will come, and take you where you tap. That's enough to work inside a controlled town environment. As times goes by there'll likely be a merger with an actual ride sharing company.
- strin 9y ago
  > there's a lot of other factors to work out like scheduling, routing, supply-demand management, optimal vehicle distribution, pooling etc These things come along the way. If there is a service that's 10x cheaper than Lyft, I could imagine most people would churn to that service. The technology shift from human to completely autonomous driving is so huge that it could just disrupt the current market structure.
  - smeyer 9y ago
    >If there is a service that's 10x cheaper Why would a ride service based on autonomous cars be 10x cheaper? It's not like 90% of the current revenue or costs are human labor. I'm not sure the exact ratio of driver labor vs. gas/maintenance/depreciation, but I'm pretty sure it's less than 10:1.
    - vthallam 9y ago
      You can run a car for longer with no driver and of course the human capital involved is none. But the flip side is that the cars wear out quickly.
      - smeyer 9y ago
        A lot of taxis are already run 24 hours a day, switching off between drivers at shift changes. The per-mile gas, maintenance, and depreciation (ignoring any fixed per-day or per-year costs) are already much more than 10% of the total cost of a ride. I came across a (possibly outdated) Uber pricing model for LA of a $5.60 minimum fare and a $0.90 per mile charge, and among other fees, NYC cabs are $2.50 per mile. Compare both of those numbers to the IRS mileage rate of $0.53 per mile to get a very rough lower bound on some of the costs.
        mrlase 9y ago
        The fare for NYC is incorrect -- $2.50 is the base price and $0.505/mile and $0.50/minute the car is stopped (i.e. in traffic if they're waiting). There's also a $1 surchage between 4-8pm on the weekdays. http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/passenger/taxicab_rate.shtml http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/passenger/taxicab_rate.shtm...
        smeyer 9y ago
        >$2.50 is the base price and $0.505/mile and $0.50/minute the car is stopped Sorry, I was going off "Plus 50 cents per 1/5 mile" to mean $2.50 per mile. Where are you getting $0.505/mile from your link?
- radicalbyte 9y ago
  If they're serious they'll just buy Lyft. That's probably Lyft's strategy. Get Instagramed/WhatsApped.
- a9a 9y ago
  I agree those other factors are complex and challenging to develop, particularly for Waymo which has the additional challenge of delivering self-driving tech that works. But Lyft (and Uber for that matter...) doesn't really have those capabilities today anyway, at least to the extent they will be needed for autonomous fleets. They have blunt tools for supply and demand management, but drivers take on much of the risk in terms of positioning, routing, and deciding whether or not to get on the road in the first place. If Waymo owns their fleet, will they let Lyft have complete control over their assets without some balance or at the very least data to make sure the vehicles are being used efficiently? And if Waymo learns enough about scheduling, routing, etc. to make sure Lyft is using the vehicles efficiently, how much harder is it for Waymo to just run the vehicles efficiently themselves and capture the value of owning a direct relationship with the end rider?
- Fricken 9y ago
  The thing is these rideshare companies: Lyft, Uber, Ola, Grab and Didi Mechagodzilla Chuxing, these companies all exploded out of nothing, they're all so young. The software they run on is complex, but not so complex that it can't be replicated. So if you're a company with the secret sauce, that being a validated autonomous OS, you would most definitely want to run the consumer facing end of the business yourself, because that's where the real profit margins are hiding. Back-end software, fleet maintenance, and harware: this stuff is all eventually going to become commoditized. Customer experience will be the differentiator. A thing to keep in mind is that a fleet of sensor riddled robotaxis will gather far more granular data about the world than just a standard human driven taxi, so the potential is there to take fleet management logistics to another level that no conventional rideshare can hope to compete with. Really, if you let your imagination run wild with what can be done with that kind of data about the world, well, oh my gosh. You're building a live action parallel universe made out of networked lidars and running annotated data through pattern recognizers. The privacy implications would make the hairs on your back stand-up if conceptualizing the astronomical amount of data that's going to kicked around hasn't already made you dizzy. It varies from company to company, but a typical test vehicle gobbles up something in the neighbourhood of 4 terabytes a day. In the future that number will go up. Thousands and thousands of Robotaxis.
  - notahacker 9y ago
    The evidence for the real profit margins being in the customer facing bit isn't strongly supported by the current market being so competitive that the companies run at VC-subsidised operating losses in most markets whilst fighting endless legal battles. If the secret sauce that changes all that is the self driving tech, the profit remains all in that. Ride locating software is relatively straightforward for a company with Alphabet's resources to develop, the business side less so, especially when its core businesses are notoriously poor at customer service and making far too much money from an existing search near-monopoly to want to risk attracting complaints about anti-competitive behaviour in new markets. And they could still can collect all that juicy data if other entities paid them enormous licence fees to run the consumer facing bit of an autonomous vehicle operation, maintain the vehicles, obtain permits in 1001 jurisdictions and design cars and ownership models to consumer preferences Unique, regulated and highly complex software and hardware components seems far less likely to become commoditized than ridesharing apps that essentially already are, and of course viable markets for the driving tech exists even if the driver can't be dispensed with altogether.
- kyrra 9y ago
  Google already has a smaller ride sharing service with Waze. It differs from Lyft and Uber in that passengers only cover gas costs. https://www.waze.com/carpool/ https://www.waze.com/carpool/
- wpietri 9y ago
  Yeah, I think Waymo is much better off selling shovels to prospectors than trying to mine all the gold themselves. A lot of people will try to get into the ridesharing business, some of them much better capitalized than Waymo.
  - jacksmith21006 9y ago
    Better capatilized than Waymo? Alphabet has over $100b cash with less than $4b debt and over 40% on shore. Only Apple has more with about $260b cash but over $100b debt and over 90% offshore so tax liability yet to be paid. What better capitalization are you speaking? Also realize Alphabet could also raise additional capital bpver easily. They are the only ones truly able to so level 4 and they are miles and miles ahead of everyone else literally. https://www.wired.com/2017/02/california-dmv-autonomous-car-disengagement/ https://www.wired.com/2017/02/california-dmv-autonomous-car-... The Numbers Don't Lie: Self-Driving Cars Are Getting Good - Wired
    - wpietri 9y ago
      Sorry, excellent point. For some reason I was thinking of Waymo as independent, even though I know that's not the case.
    - speedplane 9y ago
      Seriously, if Google wanted to actually build it's Waymo car, it could just buy Chrysler, probably in cash for ~$8-15B. It doesn't need anyone... then again, I get a sense that they have no interest in getting into that market due to the lower margins.
LrnByTeach 9y ago
Here is the most probable scenarios I foresee. If you are a pessimist about autonomous being bigger part of transpiration then add 2 years to DATES shown below. 2021 : Electric Self-driving on-demand FLEET Car 1000 miles/month SUBSCRIPTION from Google, DiDi, Uber, Renault/Nissan,Tesla, VW,Toyota,GM for $400/month 2024 :same 1000 miles/month SUBSCRIPTION $200/month At $200/month Subscription price for 1000 miles/month (which is average US driver car mileage/month), savings are so big as average car ownership is around $400/month ( AAA Estimate ) , all inclusive of - Car depreciation - Insurance cost - gasoline cost - Repairs & maintenance costs - extra 1 hours/day you get in NOT-Driving (EDIT: This Model I mentioned is Summon only, there is NO OWNERSHIP of the Car, is it monthly pay instead of per RIDE Pay . In this Model, All the Major CAR Manufactures of today offer these FLEETS with monthly pay of 1000/miles month SUBSCRIPTIONS. Being a) no-driver Cost b) ELECTRIC c) RIDE Sharing d) mass adoption -- is the key for Lower price tag of $200/month ) The above is Phase 1, in Phase 2 starting 2025 Google will be supplying only "end-to-end Autonomous vehicle Software system" for a fee of $5000/year per car for ALL the CAR FLEET companies . Google will run small FLEET of Autonomous CARs for the purpose of "Reference implementation of Software" much like "Pixel Android Phones" to showcase the Reference implementation of Android ( for all other Android Vendors )
- bitL 9y ago
  Why would you want to own a self-driving car? You'll just summon it from the nearest parking lot when needed.
  - saurik 9y ago
    I store tons of stuff in my car so I can have it available at all of the various places I end up, and while I would happily believe I am not in the majority, this does not seem to be something that would be rare. While I don't feel the need to "own" a car (I literally rent a car continually, paying in 30-day cycles), it would be extremely annoying to not have consistent control over most of the storage space in a car (I often even have stuff in the back seat I am dragging around with me forever). And no: while I do love driving, I feel no need to drive, and would welcome a future where the car drove for me... but it will be a much more awkward arrangement to get me to be OK just summoning random cars temporarily.
klarrimore 9y ago
You're asking all the wrong questions.
shykes 9y ago
I think the China/US rivalry will guarantee that there will always be at the very least one major rival to Waymo with global ambitions.
- netheril96 9y ago
  If history is to repeat itself, Waymo will dominate on the whole planet excluding China, where Chinese self driving companies prosper but cannot reach outside.
  - shykes 9y ago
    I am not convinced. Many sovereign nations will think twice before handing a foreign corporation the keys to their mass transportation industry. They will have the motivation, and the means, to keep manufacturers in check, and play them off of each other. Hopefully this will prevent runaway monopolies from taking root. I think it will be very hard to convince French regulators, for example, to allow any foreign corporation to have more visibility and control over the national transportation system than the French government itself. And unlike ridesharing, which appeared practically overnight, self-driving car technology is under mainstream scrutiny several years before achieving meaningful scale. This means regulators have more time to prepare. The car industry, and the national transportation infrastructure, is considered a matter of sovereignty, and a politically sensitive topic. This won't be anything like ridesharing, consumer electronics, or advertisement. I think (and hope) that the result will be that Waymo will fail to get a winner-takes-all stranglehold on the global self-driving car industry. Instead it will be forced to compete on a relatively level playing field, against Didi, Apple, Amazon, or whoever decides to compete in the space. The more the better. I am rooting for the regulators on this one. If they fail to protect our national transportation systems from Google-style walled gardens... Then that sends us down a very scary road, where almost every aspect of society and government ends up privatized, and managed from either the US west coast or China, with no accountability or representation.
skbohra123 9y ago
You are just thinking too much!

by a9a 9y ago

sudhirj 9y ago

Think it's unlikely that Waymo will build out and operate a full fledged ride service - there's a lot of other factors to work out like scheduling, routing, supply-demand management, optimal vehicle distribution, pooling etc that they could just delegate to Lyft for. They might just build a service to the extent of push a button and a vehicle will come, and take you where you tap. That's enough to work inside a controlled town environment. As times goes by there'll likely be a merger with an actual ride sharing company.

strin 9y ago
> there's a lot of other factors to work out like scheduling, routing, supply-demand management, optimal vehicle distribution, pooling etc These things come along the way. If there is a service that's 10x cheaper than Lyft, I could imagine most people would churn to that service. The technology shift from human to completely autonomous driving is so huge that it could just disrupt the current market structure.
- smeyer 9y ago
  >If there is a service that's 10x cheaper Why would a ride service based on autonomous cars be 10x cheaper? It's not like 90% of the current revenue or costs are human labor. I'm not sure the exact ratio of driver labor vs. gas/maintenance/depreciation, but I'm pretty sure it's less than 10:1.
  - vthallam 9y ago
    You can run a car for longer with no driver and of course the human capital involved is none. But the flip side is that the cars wear out quickly.
    - smeyer 9y ago
      A lot of taxis are already run 24 hours a day, switching off between drivers at shift changes. The per-mile gas, maintenance, and depreciation (ignoring any fixed per-day or per-year costs) are already much more than 10% of the total cost of a ride. I came across a (possibly outdated) Uber pricing model for LA of a $5.60 minimum fare and a $0.90 per mile charge, and among other fees, NYC cabs are $2.50 per mile. Compare both of those numbers to the IRS mileage rate of $0.53 per mile to get a very rough lower bound on some of the costs.
      - mrlase 9y ago
        The fare for NYC is incorrect -- $2.50 is the base price and $0.505/mile and $0.50/minute the car is stopped (i.e. in traffic if they're waiting). There's also a $1 surchage between 4-8pm on the weekdays. http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/passenger/taxicab_rate.shtml http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/passenger/taxicab_rate.shtm...
        smeyer 9y ago
        >$2.50 is the base price and $0.505/mile and $0.50/minute the car is stopped Sorry, I was going off "Plus 50 cents per 1/5 mile" to mean $2.50 per mile. Where are you getting $0.505/mile from your link?
radicalbyte 9y ago
If they're serious they'll just buy Lyft. That's probably Lyft's strategy. Get Instagramed/WhatsApped.
a9a 9y ago
I agree those other factors are complex and challenging to develop, particularly for Waymo which has the additional challenge of delivering self-driving tech that works. But Lyft (and Uber for that matter...) doesn't really have those capabilities today anyway, at least to the extent they will be needed for autonomous fleets. They have blunt tools for supply and demand management, but drivers take on much of the risk in terms of positioning, routing, and deciding whether or not to get on the road in the first place. If Waymo owns their fleet, will they let Lyft have complete control over their assets without some balance or at the very least data to make sure the vehicles are being used efficiently? And if Waymo learns enough about scheduling, routing, etc. to make sure Lyft is using the vehicles efficiently, how much harder is it for Waymo to just run the vehicles efficiently themselves and capture the value of owning a direct relationship with the end rider?
Fricken 9y ago
The thing is these rideshare companies: Lyft, Uber, Ola, Grab and Didi Mechagodzilla Chuxing, these companies all exploded out of nothing, they're all so young. The software they run on is complex, but not so complex that it can't be replicated. So if you're a company with the secret sauce, that being a validated autonomous OS, you would most definitely want to run the consumer facing end of the business yourself, because that's where the real profit margins are hiding. Back-end software, fleet maintenance, and harware: this stuff is all eventually going to become commoditized. Customer experience will be the differentiator. A thing to keep in mind is that a fleet of sensor riddled robotaxis will gather far more granular data about the world than just a standard human driven taxi, so the potential is there to take fleet management logistics to another level that no conventional rideshare can hope to compete with. Really, if you let your imagination run wild with what can be done with that kind of data about the world, well, oh my gosh. You're building a live action parallel universe made out of networked lidars and running annotated data through pattern recognizers. The privacy implications would make the hairs on your back stand-up if conceptualizing the astronomical amount of data that's going to kicked around hasn't already made you dizzy. It varies from company to company, but a typical test vehicle gobbles up something in the neighbourhood of 4 terabytes a day. In the future that number will go up. Thousands and thousands of Robotaxis.
- notahacker 9y ago
  The evidence for the real profit margins being in the customer facing bit isn't strongly supported by the current market being so competitive that the companies run at VC-subsidised operating losses in most markets whilst fighting endless legal battles. If the secret sauce that changes all that is the self driving tech, the profit remains all in that. Ride locating software is relatively straightforward for a company with Alphabet's resources to develop, the business side less so, especially when its core businesses are notoriously poor at customer service and making far too much money from an existing search near-monopoly to want to risk attracting complaints about anti-competitive behaviour in new markets. And they could still can collect all that juicy data if other entities paid them enormous licence fees to run the consumer facing bit of an autonomous vehicle operation, maintain the vehicles, obtain permits in 1001 jurisdictions and design cars and ownership models to consumer preferences Unique, regulated and highly complex software and hardware components seems far less likely to become commoditized than ridesharing apps that essentially already are, and of course viable markets for the driving tech exists even if the driver can't be dispensed with altogether.
kyrra 9y ago
Google already has a smaller ride sharing service with Waze. It differs from Lyft and Uber in that passengers only cover gas costs. https://www.waze.com/carpool/ https://www.waze.com/carpool/
wpietri 9y ago
Yeah, I think Waymo is much better off selling shovels to prospectors than trying to mine all the gold themselves. A lot of people will try to get into the ridesharing business, some of them much better capitalized than Waymo.
- jacksmith21006 9y ago
  Better capatilized than Waymo? Alphabet has over $100b cash with less than $4b debt and over 40% on shore. Only Apple has more with about $260b cash but over $100b debt and over 90% offshore so tax liability yet to be paid. What better capitalization are you speaking? Also realize Alphabet could also raise additional capital bpver easily. They are the only ones truly able to so level 4 and they are miles and miles ahead of everyone else literally. https://www.wired.com/2017/02/california-dmv-autonomous-car-disengagement/ https://www.wired.com/2017/02/california-dmv-autonomous-car-... The Numbers Don't Lie: Self-Driving Cars Are Getting Good - Wired
  - wpietri 9y ago
    Sorry, excellent point. For some reason I was thinking of Waymo as independent, even though I know that's not the case.
  - speedplane 9y ago
    Seriously, if Google wanted to actually build it's Waymo car, it could just buy Chrysler, probably in cash for ~$8-15B. It doesn't need anyone... then again, I get a sense that they have no interest in getting into that market due to the lower margins.

LrnByTeach 9y ago

Here is the most probable scenarios I foresee. If you are a pessimist about autonomous being bigger part of transpiration then add 2 years to DATES shown below. 2021 : Electric Self-driving on-demand FLEET Car 1000 miles/month SUBSCRIPTION from Google, DiDi, Uber, Renault/Nissan,Tesla, VW,Toyota,GM for $400/month 2024 :same 1000 miles/month SUBSCRIPTION $200/month At $200/month Subscription price for 1000 miles/month (which is average US driver car mileage/month), savings are so big as average car ownership is around $400/month ( AAA Estimate ) , all inclusive of - Car depreciation - Insurance cost - gasoline cost - Repairs & maintenance costs - extra 1 hours/day you get in NOT-Driving (EDIT: This Model I mentioned is Summon only, there is NO OWNERSHIP of the Car, is it monthly pay instead of per RIDE Pay . In this Model, All the Major CAR Manufactures of today offer these FLEETS with monthly pay of 1000/miles month SUBSCRIPTIONS. Being a) no-driver Cost b) ELECTRIC c) RIDE Sharing d) mass adoption -- is the key for Lower price tag of $200/month ) The above is Phase 1, in Phase 2 starting 2025 Google will be supplying only "end-to-end Autonomous vehicle Software system" for a fee of $5000/year per car for ALL the CAR FLEET companies . Google will run small FLEET of Autonomous CARs for the purpose of "Reference implementation of Software" much like "Pixel Android Phones" to showcase the Reference implementation of Android ( for all other Android Vendors )

bitL 9y ago
Why would you want to own a self-driving car? You'll just summon it from the nearest parking lot when needed.
- saurik 9y ago
  I store tons of stuff in my car so I can have it available at all of the various places I end up, and while I would happily believe I am not in the majority, this does not seem to be something that would be rare. While I don't feel the need to "own" a car (I literally rent a car continually, paying in 30-day cycles), it would be extremely annoying to not have consistent control over most of the storage space in a car (I often even have stuff in the back seat I am dragging around with me forever). And no: while I do love driving, I feel no need to drive, and would welcome a future where the car drove for me... but it will be a much more awkward arrangement to get me to be OK just summoning random cars temporarily.

klarrimore 9y ago

You're asking all the wrong questions.

shykes 9y ago

I think the China/US rivalry will guarantee that there will always be at the very least one major rival to Waymo with global ambitions.

netheril96 9y ago
If history is to repeat itself, Waymo will dominate on the whole planet excluding China, where Chinese self driving companies prosper but cannot reach outside.
- shykes 9y ago
  I am not convinced. Many sovereign nations will think twice before handing a foreign corporation the keys to their mass transportation industry. They will have the motivation, and the means, to keep manufacturers in check, and play them off of each other. Hopefully this will prevent runaway monopolies from taking root. I think it will be very hard to convince French regulators, for example, to allow any foreign corporation to have more visibility and control over the national transportation system than the French government itself. And unlike ridesharing, which appeared practically overnight, self-driving car technology is under mainstream scrutiny several years before achieving meaningful scale. This means regulators have more time to prepare. The car industry, and the national transportation infrastructure, is considered a matter of sovereignty, and a politically sensitive topic. This won't be anything like ridesharing, consumer electronics, or advertisement. I think (and hope) that the result will be that Waymo will fail to get a winner-takes-all stranglehold on the global self-driving car industry. Instead it will be forced to compete on a relatively level playing field, against Didi, Apple, Amazon, or whoever decides to compete in the space. The more the better. I am rooting for the regulators on this one. If they fail to protect our national transportation systems from Google-style walled gardens... Then that sends us down a very scary road, where almost every aspect of society and government ends up privatized, and managed from either the US west coast or China, with no accountability or representation.

skbohra123 9y ago

You are just thinking too much!