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Once Waymo has fully autonomous vehicles on the road, they'll look to acquire Lyft for a decent price. Lyft has the brand value and the infrastructure for ride

Once Waymo has fully autonomous vehicles on the road, they'll look to acquire Lyft for a decent price. Lyft has the brand value and the infrastructure for ride calling (intentionally not using ride sharing) except that drivers will no longer be needed. Profits will be through the roof when that happens.

leesec 8y ago
There are 1.4 million Lyft drivers in US and Toronto. Waymo is going to buy and retrofit and provide 1.4 million cars?
- i_cant_speel 8y ago
  Those 1.4 millions drivers aren't all driving at the same time. They would only need a fraction of that many cars and they could be built over an extended period of time.
  - throwaway082729 8y ago
    Exactly. Also, having self-driving cars does not mean that you only have self-driving cars in your fleet. They could still employ drivers strategically (in areas where demand is high which in turn will increase profitability and distribution to drivers) while using self-driving cars for commutes.
    - sigstoat 8y ago
      > ...(in areas where demand is high... or areas/weather conditions which they know are difficult for their autonomous cars to navigate.
  - leesec 8y ago
    OK so Waymo is going to buy and retrofit and provide 500k cars?
    - scarmig 8y ago
      Call it 250k/car. $125B. That's not chump change, even for Google (COH ~$100B). Optimistically with economies of scale you can get that down, but even without it's within the realm of possibility if they've got the technology working.
    - throwaway082729 8y ago
      Self-driving cars will be feasible only if LIDAR/camera costs go down to $10k/car or lower. No one is going to pay $250k for a self-driving car. At $10k/car, it's $5B for 500k cars, something that Google can easily afford.
      - leesec 8y ago
        Google would have to own the cars that this point tho right? They can't just plop a LiDAR on a car and call it self driving. So 10k+ the cost of car. Maybe 50k.
        throwaway082729 8y ago
        Not really. They could sell their technology to a car company and all cars sold by that company could be self-driving enabled. Maybe we'll get true ride sharing then. I'm at home and not planning to use my car for the day. It could be used to give someone rides without me having to go drive. Waymo/Lyft could still own some cars but not all.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > OK so Waymo is going to buy and retrofit and provide 500k cars? If they bought Lyft, they wouldn't have to do that all at once; they could just insert self-driving cars as they were available into the pool.
- obmelvin 8y ago
  1) The transition doesn't need to happen overnight nor does the transition need to entirely replace human drivers 2) 1 human driver != 1 autonomous car. While cars need servicing, they don't get hungry or tired or have a family to spend time with
treis 8y ago
>Once Waymo has fully autonomous vehicles on the road, they'll look to acquire Lyft for a decent price Google would have no need to buy Lyft. Google Maps has a much bigger install base and already has ride share integration. Lyft does have technologies that would be useful like matching riders and drivers and Lyft Line. Creating that back end is not trivial task for Google but it not a 20 billion dollar one either.

leesec 8y ago

There are 1.4 million Lyft drivers in US and Toronto. Waymo is going to buy and retrofit and provide 1.4 million cars?

i_cant_speel 8y ago
Those 1.4 millions drivers aren't all driving at the same time. They would only need a fraction of that many cars and they could be built over an extended period of time.
- throwaway082729 8y ago
  Exactly. Also, having self-driving cars does not mean that you only have self-driving cars in your fleet. They could still employ drivers strategically (in areas where demand is high which in turn will increase profitability and distribution to drivers) while using self-driving cars for commutes.
  - sigstoat 8y ago
    > ...(in areas where demand is high... or areas/weather conditions which they know are difficult for their autonomous cars to navigate.
- leesec 8y ago
  OK so Waymo is going to buy and retrofit and provide 500k cars?
  - scarmig 8y ago
    Call it 250k/car. $125B. That's not chump change, even for Google (COH ~$100B). Optimistically with economies of scale you can get that down, but even without it's within the realm of possibility if they've got the technology working.
  - throwaway082729 8y ago
    Self-driving cars will be feasible only if LIDAR/camera costs go down to $10k/car or lower. No one is going to pay $250k for a self-driving car. At $10k/car, it's $5B for 500k cars, something that Google can easily afford.
    - leesec 8y ago
      Google would have to own the cars that this point tho right? They can't just plop a LiDAR on a car and call it self driving. So 10k+ the cost of car. Maybe 50k.
      - throwaway082729 8y ago
        Not really. They could sell their technology to a car company and all cars sold by that company could be self-driving enabled. Maybe we'll get true ride sharing then. I'm at home and not planning to use my car for the day. It could be used to give someone rides without me having to go drive. Waymo/Lyft could still own some cars but not all.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > OK so Waymo is going to buy and retrofit and provide 500k cars? If they bought Lyft, they wouldn't have to do that all at once; they could just insert self-driving cars as they were available into the pool.
obmelvin 8y ago
1) The transition doesn't need to happen overnight nor does the transition need to entirely replace human drivers 2) 1 human driver != 1 autonomous car. While cars need servicing, they don't get hungry or tired or have a family to spend time with

treis 8y ago

>Once Waymo has fully autonomous vehicles on the road, they'll look to acquire Lyft for a decent price Google would have no need to buy Lyft. Google Maps has a much bigger install base and already has ride share integration. Lyft does have technologies that would be useful like matching riders and drivers and Lyft Line. Creating that back end is not trivial task for Google but it not a 20 billion dollar one either.