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Waymo has also ordered 20k Jaguar I-paces. Rumour is they have invested about 11 billion in R&d so far, and I'm crudely estimating the cost of their 80k upcomin

Waymo has also ordered 20k Jaguar I-paces. Rumour is they have invested about 11 billion in R&d so far, and I'm crudely estimating the cost of their 80k upcoming robotaxis to be around 12 billion. Alphabet is committed. Waymo estimates about 50 trips per day will be served per vehicle. At that rate, 80k robotaxis is enough to displace most of the taxi/rideshare services in the southwestern United States, though I'm not expecting to see all of them on the roads until 2022 or so. Waymo has a ton of work ahead of them. Mapping and validating in the ~100 square mile area of Chandler has taken them about 18 months so far, and supposedly they are on the verge of a commercial launch. Every city they hope to deploy in has differing signage, differing driving habits, and many funky intersections and road anomalies that need specific attention.

rbranson 8y ago
In this scenario there's no moat for Lyft/Uber either. If Waymo can meet demand, they'll be able to undercut ride sharing prices so deeply that most consumers will switch overnight. Banks will be falling over themselves to provide the massive credit they'll need to bankroll the expansion.
- CPLX 8y ago
  > they'll be able to undercut ride sharing prices Why? I see comments like this constantly. But does anyone ever do even a basic spreadsheet to explain the unit economics of this argument? Low skilled people who can drive are pretty cheap and plentiful. Even if self-driving tech is flawless (spoiler: it's not and won't be soon) it still only replaces part of their responsibilities. Someone will still have to clean the cars for example. Presumably there will be some required level of human monitoring, etc. Conversely, capital and highly reliable technology isn't free. You can calculate pretty easily the rate at which it's profitable to substitute technology for labor, this is a trade-off we've literally been making for centuries. One one side you have plentiful cheap low skilled labor. On the other you have lasers, fast computers, graphics cards, cameras, and the associated programming inspection and maintenance costs. Why do we think the latter side is going to be cheaper in anything remotely like the near term?
  - Fricken 8y ago
    Waymo doesn't have a business model if it isn't cheaper. It probably won't be much cheaper in the near term.
    - CPLX 8y ago
      That's not true at all. There are a lot more use cases for self driving technology than taxi services. In fact I'm continuously perplexed as to why this specific use case, which is obviously the most challenging and likely to be the last to reach the market, is always first in these discussions.
      - Fricken 8y ago
        There are very good reasons as to why Waymo and all the other major players are focused on robotaxis. A truck still needs to be able to drive in cities, and if you figure out how to automate all the other thing a trucker does you can replace 3 million of them. Big whoop. Robotaxis stand to challenge the economics of personal vehicle ownership, the potential market is many orders of magnitude larger.
        CPLX 8y ago
        Why can't they just have normal cars for sale that also drive themselves to start with? Like I have a car and recline and read a book on a commute most of the time. If snow gets crazy or there's very strange construction or a flooded road or a flat tire we go back to manual driving. That's plausible and incremental. No cleaning problems, no homeless people living in them, no need for remote monitoring, a far simpler liability and insurance situation, and so on. My assumption is we'll start talking seriously about robotaxis on the day this scenario is practical and battle tested. The idea of starting with taxis seems ludicrous in comparison.
        jonknee 8y ago
        > That's plausible and incremental. No cleaning problems, no homeless people living in them, no need for remote monitoring, a far simpler liability and insurance situation, and so on. These are all solved problems, I mean when was the last time you saw a homeless person camped out in a Zip Car? BMW's ReachNow vehicles are all over Seattle and they are clean, insured, fueled/charged and exactly 0 people live in them.
ScottBurson 8y ago
> Every city they hope to deploy in has differing signage, differing driving habits, and many funky intersections and road anomalies that need specific attention. The very fact that those things do need specific attention tells me they don't have true autonomy yet; they just have a way to fake it using detailed maps of known areas. I don't see how an autonomous vehicle can handle all the corner cases of real-world driving (construction zones, etc.) until it can also work reliably using only available sensor data, so that detailed mapping is no longer necessary.
- notheguyouthink 8y ago
  The escalation of data collection will be immense though, once they deploy the fleet. Even if they have to have more human involvement than desired currently, I think the first few years will show growth they could have have dreamed of in the beginning. Which must be worrisome for competition.

rbranson 8y ago

In this scenario there's no moat for Lyft/Uber either. If Waymo can meet demand, they'll be able to undercut ride sharing prices so deeply that most consumers will switch overnight. Banks will be falling over themselves to provide the massive credit they'll need to bankroll the expansion.

CPLX 8y ago
> they'll be able to undercut ride sharing prices Why? I see comments like this constantly. But does anyone ever do even a basic spreadsheet to explain the unit economics of this argument? Low skilled people who can drive are pretty cheap and plentiful. Even if self-driving tech is flawless (spoiler: it's not and won't be soon) it still only replaces part of their responsibilities. Someone will still have to clean the cars for example. Presumably there will be some required level of human monitoring, etc. Conversely, capital and highly reliable technology isn't free. You can calculate pretty easily the rate at which it's profitable to substitute technology for labor, this is a trade-off we've literally been making for centuries. One one side you have plentiful cheap low skilled labor. On the other you have lasers, fast computers, graphics cards, cameras, and the associated programming inspection and maintenance costs. Why do we think the latter side is going to be cheaper in anything remotely like the near term?
- Fricken 8y ago
  Waymo doesn't have a business model if it isn't cheaper. It probably won't be much cheaper in the near term.
  - CPLX 8y ago
    That's not true at all. There are a lot more use cases for self driving technology than taxi services. In fact I'm continuously perplexed as to why this specific use case, which is obviously the most challenging and likely to be the last to reach the market, is always first in these discussions.
    - Fricken 8y ago
      There are very good reasons as to why Waymo and all the other major players are focused on robotaxis. A truck still needs to be able to drive in cities, and if you figure out how to automate all the other thing a trucker does you can replace 3 million of them. Big whoop. Robotaxis stand to challenge the economics of personal vehicle ownership, the potential market is many orders of magnitude larger.
      - CPLX 8y ago
        Why can't they just have normal cars for sale that also drive themselves to start with? Like I have a car and recline and read a book on a commute most of the time. If snow gets crazy or there's very strange construction or a flooded road or a flat tire we go back to manual driving. That's plausible and incremental. No cleaning problems, no homeless people living in them, no need for remote monitoring, a far simpler liability and insurance situation, and so on. My assumption is we'll start talking seriously about robotaxis on the day this scenario is practical and battle tested. The idea of starting with taxis seems ludicrous in comparison.
        jonknee 8y ago
        > That's plausible and incremental. No cleaning problems, no homeless people living in them, no need for remote monitoring, a far simpler liability and insurance situation, and so on. These are all solved problems, I mean when was the last time you saw a homeless person camped out in a Zip Car? BMW's ReachNow vehicles are all over Seattle and they are clean, insured, fueled/charged and exactly 0 people live in them.

ScottBurson 8y ago

> Every city they hope to deploy in has differing signage, differing driving habits, and many funky intersections and road anomalies that need specific attention. The very fact that those things do need specific attention tells me they don't have true autonomy yet; they just have a way to fake it using detailed maps of known areas. I don't see how an autonomous vehicle can handle all the corner cases of real-world driving (construction zones, etc.) until it can also work reliably using only available sensor data, so that detailed mapping is no longer necessary.

notheguyouthink 8y ago
The escalation of data collection will be immense though, once they deploy the fleet. Even if they have to have more human involvement than desired currently, I think the first few years will show growth they could have have dreamed of in the beginning. Which must be worrisome for competition.