7 ms·

What is the actual advantage to consumers over an Uber? Novelty will wear off, and so to survive Waymo will actually need to be better in some way. Can anyone

What is the actual advantage to consumers over an Uber? Novelty will wear off, and so to survive Waymo will actually need to be better in some way. Can anyone in Phoenix answer if Waymo is cheaper? Is Waymo hoping people will choose Waymo for safety?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
whimsicalism 6y ago
I mean, if they can make this work well then you cut out the driver - which is very cost-saving. It also lets you a. optimize exactly where cars are driving to maximize ride share revenue, b. have the cars ready to pick someone up 24/7. It's going to be a much more efficient use of car capital than hiring a person to drive it.
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  But it's a very different business model to ride share, which is based on externalising the costs of the car to the drivers.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    I agree that it is a very different model, but it's a bit much to say that externalizing car repair costs is what the business model of Uber/Lyft is "based on"
    - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
      Dunno if you'll see this, but when I made my comment, this link was much of my source: https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2019/04/29/1556557142000/Scoop--the-questionable-economics-of-autonomous-taxi-fleets/ https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2019/04/29/1556557142000/Scoop--...
      - whimsicalism 6y ago
        Even that paper demonstrates that if you weaken their assumptions about taxi-car occupancy being exactly the same as Uber/Lyft and don't assume that you will have a remote monitor per every 10 cars (unsure why they would include this assumption, even the current Waymo setup doesn't have this), self-driving actually does come out as priced less. They also don't source their cost for CDV, which is substantially lower than any other number I can find cited in paper. Further, the current regulatory framework includes huge wealth transfers/incentives for car ownership, so it's not a fair comparison. For instance, the $130/yr cost of a parking permit in SF is a huge wealth transfer to car owners as that is substantially below what the market-price would be for that permit.
  - vernon99 6y ago
    These costs are still included in your ride cost though
- evanlivingston 6y ago
  Is it though? will autonomous vehicles ever get to point where there is even close to less than one engineer for each vehicle? Engineering salaries are substantially larger than driver's salaries. Also, there is the cost of years and years of extremely expensive research that needs to be offset, cloud infrastructure costs, hardware costs + costs of retooling factories for integrating the large numbers of sensors + compute. I can't imagine (without doing any actual math) that there's a cost savings within 200 years
  - drivebycomment 6y ago
    It's a good question. https://investor.uber.com/news-events/news/press-release-details/2020/Uber-Announces-Results-for-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2019/ https://investor.uber.com/news-events/news/press-release-det... shows Uber generated $65B gross booking in 2019, and we know substantial fraction of that goes to the driver. https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/For-a-driver-s-pay-what-s-fair-in-an-Uber-13830931.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/For-a-... says driver takes about ~60% of the booking. So this is a question of whether the capital cost / the engineering cost / operating cost for autonomous vehicle is higher than $65B * 0.6 = $39B per year for the same number of rides. The engineering cost will be amortized over long enough time that it's likely not a significant factor in the long run. So, the limiting factor will be the capital cost (for vehicles and its support infra) and the operating cost. As you say, at this point we don't know for sure - one thing we know is that the capital cost and the operating cost likely will see significant reduction thanks to the economy of scale.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    > will autonomous vehicles ever get to point where there is even close to less than one engineer for each vehicle? if FSD actually ends up working on most roads, I don't see why not. there's no inherent reason why engineer headcount would scale linearly with the number of cars. as for the cost savings, they don't necessarily have to beat uber's pricing today. they could alternatively try to drive uber's costs up by lobbying hard to get drivers classified as employees and catch some PR points at the same time.
adoxyz 6y ago
I would assume cheaper and more reliable service. With Uber/Lyft, you never know who you're going to get and what the experience will be like, and as someone that easily took 200-300 Uber rides per year pre-covid, I've seen some shit.
- chris_st 6y ago
  For example, we were taking an Uber through a part of a nearby city I'd never been in before, and approaching a confusing bit of roundabout, the driver leaned over to me and asked me which way to go :-(
  - crazcarl 6y ago
    Just the other night my driver turned too wide and started going the wrong way down the divided street. He u-turned and fixed it without any issue thankfully, but then he blamed it on the construction workers "moving the road" - which they definitely didn't.
    - toast0 6y ago
      I mean, that's not great, but I would take that over my SuperShuttle experience. At least your driver wasn't falling asleep repeatedly, despite apparently regularly spaced prompts from the company app to confirm he was awake.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  In the case of Uber/Lyft the driver has another function besides being the driver: they are on the hook for the capital invested in the vehicle or their ability to lease one. That's a lot of money per vehicle and utilization is the responsibility (and risk) of the driver.
  - jdminhbg 6y ago
    This is true, but note that for a self-driving vehicle, utilization is only bounded by demand and maintenance. An Uber driver can get tired or busy with other things, but a self-driving car can go 24 hours a day minus re-fueling/charging.
ch33zer 6y ago
It's possible that in the long term because Waymo doesn't need to pay drivers their overhead will be lower, which could mean lower prices for riders. Of course, Waymo cars have very expensive computers in them, and maintenance might be expensive, and the AI used to drive the cars is expensive, and they might need to have backup safety drivers (at least at first), so whether they're actually cheaper remains to be seen.
ilaksh 6y ago
For the moment one advantage is you can't catch anything from a driver since there isn't one. Long term it should be possible for the service to be cheaper than manned since they don't have to pay a driver.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  But you can catch something from the previous rider, and there isn't any driver to sanitize things for you.
nwsm 6y ago
Why does Waymo need to prove viability but Uber does not? Uber cannot lose $8B/yr forever. The obvious advantage will be price, if Uber even still exists.
jeffbee 6y ago
Let's see: you won't get raped by the driver, a professionally-maintained vehicle is likely to be more safe than a Prius with 500k miles and no windshield wipers, you won't be cyberstalked by "God View" gawkers at Uber HQ, ...
- executive 6y ago
  But will you be able to run over rioters when they attack your vehicle?
RivieraKid 6y ago
If you can take a ride with or without a random person travelling with you, what would you choose? Some people will prefer the latter, because of introversion, social anxiety, etc. In the long-term, the obvious benefit is the price. In the next 5 to 10 years I don't expect it to be cheaper than Uber, even if their cost is half of Uber's.
xtracto 6y ago
I hate interacting with that random person, it is awkward and unnecessary. Also, hopefully this will decrease the cost. This, in addition to the lower maintenance needed for electric cars might make my dream com true of not having to own a car and travel only by driverless-Uber (i.e. it might become available and affordable at last!). My take is that this will become widely available in the next 5 years. The future is bright!
klmadfejno 6y ago
* You don't need to pay drivers * You don't need an army of marketers/hr/legal/support staff for your drivers * You don't need to dodge ambiguous contractor vs. employee laws * You don't have any risk about individual drivers being bad actors or acting fraudulently * You can predict, with great accuracy, how many cars will be available at any given time, whether or not they'll want to do another drive after (they will), and where they want to end up * Your cars meet a minimum level of safety (if it works) that humans can't guarantee, especially in regards to distracted, tired, drunk, or whatever driving Given how much effort is spent on attracting and retaining drivers, I'd say Waymo has many competitive advantages lined up. If it works.
- kevincox 6y ago
  There is also a direct benefit from riders who don't want to interact with a driver. Or want to have conversations that they would be uncomfortable subjecting a driver to. I mean sure, there is a camera. But that is hugely different than a person (both positive and negative)
  - klmadfejno 6y ago
    I wonder if that'll play poorly in the business crowd. Talking in hushed tones is bad but passable when there's a human driver. It's terrible when it's a recording device.
    - kevincox 6y ago
      It's funny. For fun personal things I don't want to annoy the driver, but don't really care if what I say is recorded. For business you don't really care if the driver hears it, but don't want to get recorded. I suspect that a well-defined retention and usage policy could satisfy most business. In fact they might prefer it to having a driver listening in.
- asdff 6y ago
  How long until these too are abused like shared scooters and bikes? You order one after a night out and the previous tenant discretely left their partially digested dinner all over the seat and floor. What then? In many ways, an uber driver is also a custodian.
sergeykish 6y ago
Entire driver space can be scrapped. Cars with different seat configuration — I would love to sit with my family, friends, not on separate rows. Smaller cars for one-two passengers, brand it Eco friendly, I would certainly select Firefly over usual car. https://www.google.com/search?q=driverless+car+interior&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=driverless+car+interior&tbm=...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

whimsicalism 6y ago

I mean, if they can make this work well then you cut out the driver - which is very cost-saving. It also lets you a. optimize exactly where cars are driving to maximize ride share revenue, b. have the cars ready to pick someone up 24/7. It's going to be a much more efficient use of car capital than hiring a person to drive it.

disgruntledphd2 6y ago
But it's a very different business model to ride share, which is based on externalising the costs of the car to the drivers.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  I agree that it is a very different model, but it's a bit much to say that externalizing car repair costs is what the business model of Uber/Lyft is "based on"
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    Dunno if you'll see this, but when I made my comment, this link was much of my source: https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2019/04/29/1556557142000/Scoop--the-questionable-economics-of-autonomous-taxi-fleets/ https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2019/04/29/1556557142000/Scoop--...
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      Even that paper demonstrates that if you weaken their assumptions about taxi-car occupancy being exactly the same as Uber/Lyft and don't assume that you will have a remote monitor per every 10 cars (unsure why they would include this assumption, even the current Waymo setup doesn't have this), self-driving actually does come out as priced less. They also don't source their cost for CDV, which is substantially lower than any other number I can find cited in paper. Further, the current regulatory framework includes huge wealth transfers/incentives for car ownership, so it's not a fair comparison. For instance, the $130/yr cost of a parking permit in SF is a huge wealth transfer to car owners as that is substantially below what the market-price would be for that permit.
- vernon99 6y ago
  These costs are still included in your ride cost though
evanlivingston 6y ago
Is it though? will autonomous vehicles ever get to point where there is even close to less than one engineer for each vehicle? Engineering salaries are substantially larger than driver's salaries. Also, there is the cost of years and years of extremely expensive research that needs to be offset, cloud infrastructure costs, hardware costs + costs of retooling factories for integrating the large numbers of sensors + compute. I can't imagine (without doing any actual math) that there's a cost savings within 200 years
- drivebycomment 6y ago
  It's a good question. https://investor.uber.com/news-events/news/press-release-details/2020/Uber-Announces-Results-for-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2019/ https://investor.uber.com/news-events/news/press-release-det... shows Uber generated $65B gross booking in 2019, and we know substantial fraction of that goes to the driver. https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/For-a-driver-s-pay-what-s-fair-in-an-Uber-13830931.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/For-a-... says driver takes about ~60% of the booking. So this is a question of whether the capital cost / the engineering cost / operating cost for autonomous vehicle is higher than $65B * 0.6 = $39B per year for the same number of rides. The engineering cost will be amortized over long enough time that it's likely not a significant factor in the long run. So, the limiting factor will be the capital cost (for vehicles and its support infra) and the operating cost. As you say, at this point we don't know for sure - one thing we know is that the capital cost and the operating cost likely will see significant reduction thanks to the economy of scale.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  > will autonomous vehicles ever get to point where there is even close to less than one engineer for each vehicle? if FSD actually ends up working on most roads, I don't see why not. there's no inherent reason why engineer headcount would scale linearly with the number of cars. as for the cost savings, they don't necessarily have to beat uber's pricing today. they could alternatively try to drive uber's costs up by lobbying hard to get drivers classified as employees and catch some PR points at the same time.

adoxyz 6y ago

I would assume cheaper and more reliable service. With Uber/Lyft, you never know who you're going to get and what the experience will be like, and as someone that easily took 200-300 Uber rides per year pre-covid, I've seen some shit.

chris_st 6y ago
For example, we were taking an Uber through a part of a nearby city I'd never been in before, and approaching a confusing bit of roundabout, the driver leaned over to me and asked me which way to go :-(
- crazcarl 6y ago
  Just the other night my driver turned too wide and started going the wrong way down the divided street. He u-turned and fixed it without any issue thankfully, but then he blamed it on the construction workers "moving the road" - which they definitely didn't.
  - toast0 6y ago
    I mean, that's not great, but I would take that over my SuperShuttle experience. At least your driver wasn't falling asleep repeatedly, despite apparently regularly spaced prompts from the company app to confirm he was awake.
jacquesm 6y ago
In the case of Uber/Lyft the driver has another function besides being the driver: they are on the hook for the capital invested in the vehicle or their ability to lease one. That's a lot of money per vehicle and utilization is the responsibility (and risk) of the driver.
- jdminhbg 6y ago
  This is true, but note that for a self-driving vehicle, utilization is only bounded by demand and maintenance. An Uber driver can get tired or busy with other things, but a self-driving car can go 24 hours a day minus re-fueling/charging.

ch33zer 6y ago

It's possible that in the long term because Waymo doesn't need to pay drivers their overhead will be lower, which could mean lower prices for riders. Of course, Waymo cars have very expensive computers in them, and maintenance might be expensive, and the AI used to drive the cars is expensive, and they might need to have backup safety drivers (at least at first), so whether they're actually cheaper remains to be seen.

ilaksh 6y ago

For the moment one advantage is you can't catch anything from a driver since there isn't one. Long term it should be possible for the service to be cheaper than manned since they don't have to pay a driver.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
But you can catch something from the previous rider, and there isn't any driver to sanitize things for you.

nwsm 6y ago

Why does Waymo need to prove viability but Uber does not? Uber cannot lose $8B/yr forever. The obvious advantage will be price, if Uber even still exists.

jeffbee 6y ago

Let's see: you won't get raped by the driver, a professionally-maintained vehicle is likely to be more safe than a Prius with 500k miles and no windshield wipers, you won't be cyberstalked by "God View" gawkers at Uber HQ, ...

executive 6y ago
But will you be able to run over rioters when they attack your vehicle?

RivieraKid 6y ago

If you can take a ride with or without a random person travelling with you, what would you choose? Some people will prefer the latter, because of introversion, social anxiety, etc. In the long-term, the obvious benefit is the price. In the next 5 to 10 years I don't expect it to be cheaper than Uber, even if their cost is half of Uber's.

xtracto 6y ago

I hate interacting with that random person, it is awkward and unnecessary. Also, hopefully this will decrease the cost. This, in addition to the lower maintenance needed for electric cars might make my dream com true of not having to own a car and travel only by driverless-Uber (i.e. it might become available and affordable at last!). My take is that this will become widely available in the next 5 years. The future is bright!

klmadfejno 6y ago

* You don't need to pay drivers * You don't need an army of marketers/hr/legal/support staff for your drivers * You don't need to dodge ambiguous contractor vs. employee laws * You don't have any risk about individual drivers being bad actors or acting fraudulently * You can predict, with great accuracy, how many cars will be available at any given time, whether or not they'll want to do another drive after (they will), and where they want to end up * Your cars meet a minimum level of safety (if it works) that humans can't guarantee, especially in regards to distracted, tired, drunk, or whatever driving Given how much effort is spent on attracting and retaining drivers, I'd say Waymo has many competitive advantages lined up. If it works.

kevincox 6y ago
There is also a direct benefit from riders who don't want to interact with a driver. Or want to have conversations that they would be uncomfortable subjecting a driver to. I mean sure, there is a camera. But that is hugely different than a person (both positive and negative)
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  I wonder if that'll play poorly in the business crowd. Talking in hushed tones is bad but passable when there's a human driver. It's terrible when it's a recording device.
  - kevincox 6y ago
    It's funny. For fun personal things I don't want to annoy the driver, but don't really care if what I say is recorded. For business you don't really care if the driver hears it, but don't want to get recorded. I suspect that a well-defined retention and usage policy could satisfy most business. In fact they might prefer it to having a driver listening in.
asdff 6y ago
How long until these too are abused like shared scooters and bikes? You order one after a night out and the previous tenant discretely left their partially digested dinner all over the seat and floor. What then? In many ways, an uber driver is also a custodian.

sergeykish 6y ago

Entire driver space can be scrapped. Cars with different seat configuration — I would love to sit with my family, friends, not on separate rows. Smaller cars for one-two passengers, brand it Eco friendly, I would certainly select Firefly over usual car. https://www.google.com/search?q=driverless+car+interior&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=driverless+car+interior&tbm=...