9 ms·

Waymo now open to everyone in San Francisco

106 points by alphabetting 4y ago

givemeethekeys 4y ago
Can anyone comment on how much this costs? Is it on par with Uber / Lyft? Is it cheaper?
- alphabetting 4y ago
  I've only rode two times in Arizona but it was probably 25-35% cheaper than a comparable Uber.
  - karp773 4y ago
    Yeah, Uber is toast. So is Lyft et al.
  - mechagodzilla 4y ago
    I think any prices anyone has seen so far are pretty arbitrary and have no relationship to the 'cost' of actually providing that ride. The price is that cheap because if it wasn't 25-35% cheaper than Uber, why would anyone test it for them? They've spent billions of dollars so far and probably have a burn rate of billions more each year, and that's without doing any kind of future capital-intensive build out of cars and maintenance infrastructure.
pageandrew 4y ago
The app is still showing me a "sign up to be part of our testing program" screen, and I'm currently in the city of San Francisco.
- syntheweave 4y ago
  The HN headline is slightly hyperbolic. The tweet says they are approved for service but will work through the waitlist in coming weeks before they make it fully public.
  - wahern 4y ago
    It doesn't seem like the situation is any different than with Cruise. Cruise received this same license June 2 (https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/news-and-updates/all-news/cpuc-issues-first-driverless-autonomous-vehicle-passenger-service-deployment-permit https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/news-and-updates/all-news/cpuc-issue...), and I'm still waitlisted. Maybe Waymo will expand their operations faster, but I'm skeptical.
throwaway23597 4y ago
Very interested to see how this goes, especially in SF. SF is a city filled to the brim with crazy people, homeless, criminals, drug addicts, and a hell of a lot of people who hate tech for what it has done to the city's cost of living. And these groups have lots of overlap. My intuition is that giving everyone in the city access to highly expensive toys from the tech industry with no human oversight is a recipe for disgusting, broken vehicles that nobody will want to ride in, but I'd love to be proven wrong. Hopefully those geniuses over at Waymo have already thought of a solution to this.
- tdehnel 4y ago
  Unfortunately it will take a lot more than Waymo to solve the problems you mentioned. It will take enforcing laws, arresting criminals, and offering drug/mental health treatment as an alternative to jail, while at the same time providing housing conditional on employment and good behavior. Nothing short of this will solve our crime, addiction, and homelessness problems in a humane way.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dmode 4y ago
  Cruise has been running this for a while now, and nothing like that has happened. SF craziness is mostly limited to Tenderloin
  - minwcnt5 4y ago
    They have a bunch of driverless cars driving around at night, but they've so far only been serving a handful of rides per day, and there's a waitlist to get access. So it's not really open to crazy drugged out criminal anti-tech folks OP was talking about yet. That said, I don't expect this to be a big problem given the cars are loaded with cameras. There will be people who create mischief but they'll quickly be banned from the service.
mechagodzilla 4y ago
It's very difficult for me to see how Waymo could actually become a profitable company. Trying to be an actual taxi company (using custom low volume, high cost cars) seems capital intensive and low profit-margin (you're competing against every other form of transportation, along with uber and lyft with their low-paid employees that provide their own cars), and it seems like the number of major car companies that could license their software is rapidly falling (Tesla and GM definitely have their own in-house competitors, and other major car companies probably do as well). So how do they actually make money? They're billions of dollars into this project, and it just seems like they've missed their market window.
- toast0 4y ago
  > It's very difficult for me to see how Waymo could actually become a profitable company. Patent licensing or military contracts. Almost certainly not from running a taxi service.
- lantry 4y ago
  maybe the taxi service is just a way to gather more data, a stepping stone to a bigger market? I agree though, licensing it doesn't seem like it'll be enough, and idk what else they could be going for. Maybe last-mile delivery? Maybe they think conquering self-driving will help unlock AGI? or maybe they don't really have a plan for monetization yet
- martindbp 4y ago
  In the short to medium term they will keep bleeding cash, but in the long term as they scale, hardware and other costs will go down considerably. They will not only replace taxis but increase them by some factor, 10x? 100x? Who knows where the limit is when hardware, electricity and cleaning are the only marginal costs. That said I think self-driving ADAS subscriptions for personal vehicles is and will generate most of the profit in this space. By any measure Tesla's FSD is already profitable to the tune of $1+ billion a year, and it's not even widely released yet.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
  > and it seems like the number of major car companies that could license their software is rapidly falling (Tesla and GM definitely have their own in-house competitors, and other major car companies probably do as well). So how do they actually make money? They're billions of dollars into this project, and it just seems like they've missed their market window. I think this argument answers itself. If you’re the only company with this technology, you get to license it to everyone. If you are the tenth company, you will have a hard time finding licensees, so why bother spending the billions? If it really costs so much to develop, the equilibrium is for only a few entities to make that investment and sell it to everyone else.
bsaul 4y ago
is waymo dealing with lane insertion in a consistently safe way or does it stumble sometimes like i've seen tesla car do on youtube ?
Karupan 4y ago
Question for those familiar: what do these driverless cabs do between rides? Do they just park at the closest free/low cost spot or do they keep driving around? Or are there dedicated spots rented out by Waymo where the cars dock?
- bergenty 4y ago
  They meet in secret locations and do illegal races and burnouts at intersections.
- ericpauley 4y ago
  No source, but I was walking in SF a few months ago and passed a small parking lot with only Waymo cars parked, so likely they have locations scattered around.
kranke155 4y ago
Só finally we get bloody self driving cars! Glad to see Waymo pulled it off after so many years. Hopefully if this SF test works they will expand rapidly.
prng2021 4y ago
I have to admit I was really doubtful we'd have fully self driving cars within the next 50 years in any major city, but here we are. I guess I watched too many Tesla fail videos. Bravo Waymo!
jti107 4y ago
i got to try it out in arizona and it worked pretty well. it was a nice day and light traffic so will be interesting to see how well it does in a congested city. but i can see waymo being able to expand to several cities a year. also checked uber and waymo was ~$1-$2 less for a ~$10 ride.

106 points by alphabetting 4y ago

givemeethekeys 4y ago

Can anyone comment on how much this costs? Is it on par with Uber / Lyft? Is it cheaper?

alphabetting 4y ago
I've only rode two times in Arizona but it was probably 25-35% cheaper than a comparable Uber.
- karp773 4y ago
  Yeah, Uber is toast. So is Lyft et al.
- mechagodzilla 4y ago
  I think any prices anyone has seen so far are pretty arbitrary and have no relationship to the 'cost' of actually providing that ride. The price is that cheap because if it wasn't 25-35% cheaper than Uber, why would anyone test it for them? They've spent billions of dollars so far and probably have a burn rate of billions more each year, and that's without doing any kind of future capital-intensive build out of cars and maintenance infrastructure.

pageandrew 4y ago

The app is still showing me a "sign up to be part of our testing program" screen, and I'm currently in the city of San Francisco.

syntheweave 4y ago
The HN headline is slightly hyperbolic. The tweet says they are approved for service but will work through the waitlist in coming weeks before they make it fully public.
- wahern 4y ago
  It doesn't seem like the situation is any different than with Cruise. Cruise received this same license June 2 (https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/news-and-updates/all-news/cpuc-issues-first-driverless-autonomous-vehicle-passenger-service-deployment-permit https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/news-and-updates/all-news/cpuc-issue...), and I'm still waitlisted. Maybe Waymo will expand their operations faster, but I'm skeptical.

throwaway23597 4y ago

Very interested to see how this goes, especially in SF. SF is a city filled to the brim with crazy people, homeless, criminals, drug addicts, and a hell of a lot of people who hate tech for what it has done to the city's cost of living. And these groups have lots of overlap. My intuition is that giving everyone in the city access to highly expensive toys from the tech industry with no human oversight is a recipe for disgusting, broken vehicles that nobody will want to ride in, but I'd love to be proven wrong. Hopefully those geniuses over at Waymo have already thought of a solution to this.

tdehnel 4y ago
Unfortunately it will take a lot more than Waymo to solve the problems you mentioned. It will take enforcing laws, arresting criminals, and offering drug/mental health treatment as an alternative to jail, while at the same time providing housing conditional on employment and good behavior. Nothing short of this will solve our crime, addiction, and homelessness problems in a humane way.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dmode 4y ago
Cruise has been running this for a while now, and nothing like that has happened. SF craziness is mostly limited to Tenderloin
- minwcnt5 4y ago
  They have a bunch of driverless cars driving around at night, but they've so far only been serving a handful of rides per day, and there's a waitlist to get access. So it's not really open to crazy drugged out criminal anti-tech folks OP was talking about yet. That said, I don't expect this to be a big problem given the cars are loaded with cameras. There will be people who create mischief but they'll quickly be banned from the service.

mechagodzilla 4y ago

It's very difficult for me to see how Waymo could actually become a profitable company. Trying to be an actual taxi company (using custom low volume, high cost cars) seems capital intensive and low profit-margin (you're competing against every other form of transportation, along with uber and lyft with their low-paid employees that provide their own cars), and it seems like the number of major car companies that could license their software is rapidly falling (Tesla and GM definitely have their own in-house competitors, and other major car companies probably do as well). So how do they actually make money? They're billions of dollars into this project, and it just seems like they've missed their market window.

toast0 4y ago
> It's very difficult for me to see how Waymo could actually become a profitable company. Patent licensing or military contracts. Almost certainly not from running a taxi service.
lantry 4y ago
maybe the taxi service is just a way to gather more data, a stepping stone to a bigger market? I agree though, licensing it doesn't seem like it'll be enough, and idk what else they could be going for. Maybe last-mile delivery? Maybe they think conquering self-driving will help unlock AGI? or maybe they don't really have a plan for monetization yet
martindbp 4y ago
In the short to medium term they will keep bleeding cash, but in the long term as they scale, hardware and other costs will go down considerably. They will not only replace taxis but increase them by some factor, 10x? 100x? Who knows where the limit is when hardware, electricity and cleaning are the only marginal costs. That said I think self-driving ADAS subscriptions for personal vehicles is and will generate most of the profit in this space. By any measure Tesla's FSD is already profitable to the tune of $1+ billion a year, and it's not even widely released yet.
fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
> and it seems like the number of major car companies that could license their software is rapidly falling (Tesla and GM definitely have their own in-house competitors, and other major car companies probably do as well). So how do they actually make money? They're billions of dollars into this project, and it just seems like they've missed their market window. I think this argument answers itself. If you’re the only company with this technology, you get to license it to everyone. If you are the tenth company, you will have a hard time finding licensees, so why bother spending the billions? If it really costs so much to develop, the equilibrium is for only a few entities to make that investment and sell it to everyone else.

bsaul 4y ago

is waymo dealing with lane insertion in a consistently safe way or does it stumble sometimes like i've seen tesla car do on youtube ?

Karupan 4y ago

Question for those familiar: what do these driverless cabs do between rides? Do they just park at the closest free/low cost spot or do they keep driving around? Or are there dedicated spots rented out by Waymo where the cars dock?

bergenty 4y ago
They meet in secret locations and do illegal races and burnouts at intersections.
ericpauley 4y ago
No source, but I was walking in SF a few months ago and passed a small parking lot with only Waymo cars parked, so likely they have locations scattered around.

kranke155 4y ago

Só finally we get bloody self driving cars! Glad to see Waymo pulled it off after so many years. Hopefully if this SF test works they will expand rapidly.

prng2021 4y ago

I have to admit I was really doubtful we'd have fully self driving cars within the next 50 years in any major city, but here we are. I guess I watched too many Tesla fail videos. Bravo Waymo!

jti107 4y ago

i got to try it out in arizona and it worked pretty well. it was a nice day and light traffic so will be interesting to see how well it does in a congested city. but i can see waymo being able to expand to several cities a year. also checked uber and waymo was ~$1-$2 less for a ~$10 ride.