6 ms·

George Hotz makes some good points about Waymo. At best it's a slower Uber (drives more timidly and slower) with the potential to be cheaper. So let's customers

by eloff 6y ago

George Hotz makes some good points about Waymo. At best it's a slower Uber (drives more timidly and slower) with the potential to be cheaper. So let's customers trade time for money. But uber pool already does that and accounts for about 10% of rides - in other words it's not a trade off the market demands. Then add to that it's had like ten billion dollars of investment. So it needs to turn into an uber sized company or it will be a failure. Not exactly standard Silicon Valley MVP style prove the business model, acquire customers, and then get series A investment. Even if it can solve self driving, it could still fail as a company.

riffraff 6y ago
> But uber pool already does that and accounts for about 10% of rides - in other words it's not a trade off the market demands. How is that the same thing? Sharing a car with someone is definitely not the same as just being slower.
chaostheory 6y ago
Unlike Uber, Waymo won't be forced to reclassify their drivers as employees with benefits. The more governments force the increase of employee benefits and pay, the more corporations are attracted by the allure of mechanization. It has a future.
cyrux004 6y ago
If they can make it a slower Uber but somehow cut costs 50%, that may be a better product market fit. Arent drivers the most expensive part of Uber ? However with those low margins, not sure how long it will take to recoup their massive engineering investment
jbay808 6y ago
> Not exactly standard Silicon Valley MVP style prove the business model, acquire customers, and then get series A investment. It's solving a hard problem and you don't build a Series A around an unsolved hard problem even when you know that there's market demand. That's why nobody is running a startup selling electricity below cost as an MVP for their fusion reactor back-of-a-napkin sketch. If it's just a matter of aggressive driving, I'm sure Waymo has a dial they can turn that would make them go faster, and then Uber has already proven the market for them. But they need to get the safety margins up before doing that, which is a hard problem. Is it the Silicon Valley model? Well it's not the get rich quick VC model. It's much more like the Bell Labs model of growing a transformative but immature technology in house until it's ready to deploy.
- eloff 6y ago
  I think the comma.ai approach of trying to solve the problem incrementally while producing a profitable company at each step of the way is much smarter. Waymo is just throwing money at the problem without a clear path to return on investment. We all know how patient Google is with that kind of project. It's asking to get the whole thing cancelled. It runs very much counter to the typical Silicon Valley model.
crazygringo 6y ago
Uber Pool is maybe 50-70% of the price for 2-3x the time. Waymo would be, what -- 25% or 30% of the price for maybe 1.2x the time? And with total privacy, which Uber Pool doesn't provide? And heck, a Waymo Pool might be just 10-15% of the price. That would be revolutionary. I can't imagine the market not demanding that. The tradeoffs are totally different from Uber Pool.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  > 2-3x the time Not just this; time varies wildly. Maybe it's 1.5x, maybe it's 3.5x. You can't really plan around it.
- kfarr 6y ago
  Agreed this is very differentiated from Pool, and I would think (hope?) it will eventually be <15% the price of "normal" Ubers.
- eloff 6y ago
  Yes, that's true. If it's cheap enough and more private/predictable than uber pool, there will be market demand. Can they accomplish that before the project gets cancelled? Because at the rate they're burning money there is a finite time that alphabet will continue to back it.
kemiller 6y ago
I think Hotz's hypothesis re: uber pool may not be correct. I don't think it's the slowness alone that has people reject uber pool, it's the slowness + having to share with yet another stranger. Robotaxis promise cheaper rides AND no social awkwardness. However, I think you're right about the capital intensiveness of Waymo's approach. Not only do they have to spring for the capex (vs Tesla where they have conned^H^H^Hvinced their customers to front the capital for the fleet) but they have to operate a continuous remapping fleet to keep their hi-def maps up to date. Possible they could incorporate that part into the taxis, but it's still something Tesla doesn't have to do. In my mind, there are two possibilities: Waymo works and Tesla just never quite gets there, and thus Waymo has the time to gradually map and roll out to cities all over the world, or Tesla works too, and has much more attractive economics, and thus can deploy faster and owns the market, even if it takes it longer to achieve "true" FSD. Only time will tell.
jartelt 6y ago
You may be correct, but I would just note that Uber and Uberpool are not perfect by any means. I've had a good number of ubers that are dirty or smelly, that have poor drivers, that have inadequate trunk space, or that have little to no leg room. Sometimes it is great with ubers, but it can be very hit or miss. Customers may be willing to trade off on ride speed if Waymo gives them a better user experience in terms ride quality and vehicle standardization (i.e. the roomy Waymo minivan).
creato 6y ago
> George Hotz makes some good points about Waymo. At best it's a slower Uber (drives more timidly and slower) with the potential to be cheaper. So let's customers trade time for money. But uber pool already does that and accounts for about 10% of rides - in other words it's not a trade off the market demands. I don't think that's the same thing. I don't like uber pool because it's very unpredictable, not just that it's slow. If it were predictably slow, I might use it more.
darkwizard42 6y ago
Unfortunately the economics don't work super favorably for Pool/Shared rides. The labor cost is still too high and the "match efficiency" (measure of how overlapping the routes are, how expensive the deviations are) has to be VERY high to get real profitable returns (see: airport rides departing from same or closeby doors/terminals) I get that with Waymo you are trading labor for recouping R&D, maintenance etc. which might still be expensive but I don't think the market has had the opportunity to decide on this type of trade-off yet.
raisedbyninjas 6y ago
The market for cheaper rides that you don't have to share with n random strangers is non-zero. Also how much cheaper will Waymo be?
ehsankia 6y ago
> George Hotz makes some good points And also higher up the thread > I think Elon Musk makes some good points I find it funny that all these "Good points" happen to come from the very people who have a vested interest in Waymo failing and their own alternative path being the better choice... Only time will tell which path was better, and I'd honestly take the points from their competitors with a grain of salt.
joshuamorton 6y ago
> At best it's a slower Uber (drives more timidly and slower) I'd pay a premium for this. Some uber drivers are frightening, and to me it's not worth it the clenching to arrive 20 seconds faster. For the driver though, it may me more rides in a day.
VikingCoder 6y ago
Wow, do I disagree with you. I have repeatedly had Uber and Lyft pick a driver, I wait tens of minutes, and then the ride is cancelled. If Waymo can avoid that, then I would gladly pay MORE for it. (I waited at a hospital for 2 hours, at 2 am, one time.) I've also had an Uber driver who had no idea how to drive. My wife had an Uber driver who was convinced the destination was a hundred yards into one of the Great Lakes, and couldn't be convinced to change their mind. I think you're also underestimating the value of long-haul rides. If I can get a "moving hotel" that drives me over night to an awesome destination, I think that would be awesome. I mean, ideally it's a train. But that takes tons of infrastructure we don't have. If I could pay airline rates, and not have to go through airport security, not have delayed or cancelled flights, and could travel while sleeping? That would be phenomenal. Especially right now, avoiding airports and crowded planes? And post-covid, I think it could really help tourism. I think you're also under-valuing having a self-driving car from the novelty aspect. Picture you're at a Disneyworld Resort, and you order Lighting McQueen to take you to the Magic Kingdom. He pulls up, it looks like him, sounds like him. You hop in, and you see his face on a display, continuing to talk to you. Heck, picture the whole car is designed like a movie theater. Nice and dark, great sound. Also, picture a self-driving car with a liquor license. That's like limo service, at Uber price, right? Hard to do that with an actual human driver, without a limousine license, right? And we've all seen research that says that once you get enough self-driving cars, traffic jams go away. That alone is worth the cost, and then some.

by eloff 6y ago

riffraff 6y ago

> But uber pool already does that and accounts for about 10% of rides - in other words it's not a trade off the market demands. How is that the same thing? Sharing a car with someone is definitely not the same as just being slower.

chaostheory 6y ago

Unlike Uber, Waymo won't be forced to reclassify their drivers as employees with benefits. The more governments force the increase of employee benefits and pay, the more corporations are attracted by the allure of mechanization. It has a future.

cyrux004 6y ago

If they can make it a slower Uber but somehow cut costs 50%, that may be a better product market fit. Arent drivers the most expensive part of Uber ? However with those low margins, not sure how long it will take to recoup their massive engineering investment

jbay808 6y ago

> Not exactly standard Silicon Valley MVP style prove the business model, acquire customers, and then get series A investment. It's solving a hard problem and you don't build a Series A around an unsolved hard problem even when you know that there's market demand. That's why nobody is running a startup selling electricity below cost as an MVP for their fusion reactor back-of-a-napkin sketch. If it's just a matter of aggressive driving, I'm sure Waymo has a dial they can turn that would make them go faster, and then Uber has already proven the market for them. But they need to get the safety margins up before doing that, which is a hard problem. Is it the Silicon Valley model? Well it's not the get rich quick VC model. It's much more like the Bell Labs model of growing a transformative but immature technology in house until it's ready to deploy.

eloff 6y ago
I think the comma.ai approach of trying to solve the problem incrementally while producing a profitable company at each step of the way is much smarter. Waymo is just throwing money at the problem without a clear path to return on investment. We all know how patient Google is with that kind of project. It's asking to get the whole thing cancelled. It runs very much counter to the typical Silicon Valley model.

crazygringo 6y ago

Uber Pool is maybe 50-70% of the price for 2-3x the time. Waymo would be, what -- 25% or 30% of the price for maybe 1.2x the time? And with total privacy, which Uber Pool doesn't provide? And heck, a Waymo Pool might be just 10-15% of the price. That would be revolutionary. I can't imagine the market not demanding that. The tradeoffs are totally different from Uber Pool.

dehrmann 6y ago
> 2-3x the time Not just this; time varies wildly. Maybe it's 1.5x, maybe it's 3.5x. You can't really plan around it.
kfarr 6y ago
Agreed this is very differentiated from Pool, and I would think (hope?) it will eventually be <15% the price of "normal" Ubers.
eloff 6y ago
Yes, that's true. If it's cheap enough and more private/predictable than uber pool, there will be market demand. Can they accomplish that before the project gets cancelled? Because at the rate they're burning money there is a finite time that alphabet will continue to back it.

kemiller 6y ago

I think Hotz's hypothesis re: uber pool may not be correct. I don't think it's the slowness alone that has people reject uber pool, it's the slowness + having to share with yet another stranger. Robotaxis promise cheaper rides AND no social awkwardness. However, I think you're right about the capital intensiveness of Waymo's approach. Not only do they have to spring for the capex (vs Tesla where they have conned^H^H^Hvinced their customers to front the capital for the fleet) but they have to operate a continuous remapping fleet to keep their hi-def maps up to date. Possible they could incorporate that part into the taxis, but it's still something Tesla doesn't have to do. In my mind, there are two possibilities: Waymo works and Tesla just never quite gets there, and thus Waymo has the time to gradually map and roll out to cities all over the world, or Tesla works too, and has much more attractive economics, and thus can deploy faster and owns the market, even if it takes it longer to achieve "true" FSD. Only time will tell.

jartelt 6y ago

You may be correct, but I would just note that Uber and Uberpool are not perfect by any means. I've had a good number of ubers that are dirty or smelly, that have poor drivers, that have inadequate trunk space, or that have little to no leg room. Sometimes it is great with ubers, but it can be very hit or miss. Customers may be willing to trade off on ride speed if Waymo gives them a better user experience in terms ride quality and vehicle standardization (i.e. the roomy Waymo minivan).

creato 6y ago

> George Hotz makes some good points about Waymo. At best it's a slower Uber (drives more timidly and slower) with the potential to be cheaper. So let's customers trade time for money. But uber pool already does that and accounts for about 10% of rides - in other words it's not a trade off the market demands. I don't think that's the same thing. I don't like uber pool because it's very unpredictable, not just that it's slow. If it were predictably slow, I might use it more.

darkwizard42 6y ago

Unfortunately the economics don't work super favorably for Pool/Shared rides. The labor cost is still too high and the "match efficiency" (measure of how overlapping the routes are, how expensive the deviations are) has to be VERY high to get real profitable returns (see: airport rides departing from same or closeby doors/terminals) I get that with Waymo you are trading labor for recouping R&D, maintenance etc. which might still be expensive but I don't think the market has had the opportunity to decide on this type of trade-off yet.

raisedbyninjas 6y ago

The market for cheaper rides that you don't have to share with n random strangers is non-zero. Also how much cheaper will Waymo be?

ehsankia 6y ago

> George Hotz makes some good points And also higher up the thread > I think Elon Musk makes some good points I find it funny that all these "Good points" happen to come from the very people who have a vested interest in Waymo failing and their own alternative path being the better choice... Only time will tell which path was better, and I'd honestly take the points from their competitors with a grain of salt.

joshuamorton 6y ago

> At best it's a slower Uber (drives more timidly and slower) I'd pay a premium for this. Some uber drivers are frightening, and to me it's not worth it the clenching to arrive 20 seconds faster. For the driver though, it may me more rides in a day.

VikingCoder 6y ago

Wow, do I disagree with you. I have repeatedly had Uber and Lyft pick a driver, I wait tens of minutes, and then the ride is cancelled. If Waymo can avoid that, then I would gladly pay MORE for it. (I waited at a hospital for 2 hours, at 2 am, one time.) I've also had an Uber driver who had no idea how to drive. My wife had an Uber driver who was convinced the destination was a hundred yards into one of the Great Lakes, and couldn't be convinced to change their mind. I think you're also underestimating the value of long-haul rides. If I can get a "moving hotel" that drives me over night to an awesome destination, I think that would be awesome. I mean, ideally it's a train. But that takes tons of infrastructure we don't have. If I could pay airline rates, and not have to go through airport security, not have delayed or cancelled flights, and could travel while sleeping? That would be phenomenal. Especially right now, avoiding airports and crowded planes? And post-covid, I think it could really help tourism. I think you're also under-valuing having a self-driving car from the novelty aspect. Picture you're at a Disneyworld Resort, and you order Lighting McQueen to take you to the Magic Kingdom. He pulls up, it looks like him, sounds like him. You hop in, and you see his face on a display, continuing to talk to you. Heck, picture the whole car is designed like a movie theater. Nice and dark, great sound. Also, picture a self-driving car with a liquor license. That's like limo service, at Uber price, right? Hard to do that with an actual human driver, without a limousine license, right? And we've all seen research that says that once you get enough self-driving cars, traffic jams go away. That alone is worth the cost, and then some.