I read this very differently. This was coming off of the failure of Firefly (https://qz.com/1005083/the-cutest-thing-google-has-ever-made-is-dead-waymos-firefly

I read this very differently. This was coming off of the failure of Firefly (https://qz.com/1005083/the-cutest-thing-google-has-ever-made-is-dead-waymos-firefly-self-driving-cars-goog/ https://qz.com/1005083/the-cutest-thing-google-has-ever-made...). The problem with it was that you couldn't have a safety driver in the car. So it would require level 5 ready software. My interpretation of Levandowski, is that he is pitching the current waymo strategy, to get as many retrofitted vehicles on the road in the target market and collect a ton of training data. These human driven "self-driving" cars could pick up passengers while collecting the data so as to build up a customer base and service flow for the future service.