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But take Uber and Lyft for example - their drivers probably net well under $20/hr, and more importantly, both of those companies have been bleeding money for th

But take Uber and Lyft for example - their drivers probably net well under $20/hr, and more importantly, both of those companies have been bleeding money for their entire existence. Now imagine we’re in a world where lots of people are actually willing to pay for rides in self-driving cars, and there is profit to be made - Tesla and GM and all the other car companies with lots of experience making millions of cars per year reliably and cheaply, and with their own self-driving capabilities in-house, are now competing with Waymo. Waymo doesn’t seem like they have a big competitive advantage in self-driving technology, car manufacturing or general transportation services - so where are their billions in future profit going to come from?

dehrmann 4y ago
> But take Uber and Lyft for example - their drivers probably net well under $20/hr I agree, but this isn't sustainable. You can only depend on people screwing up the math on their net pay for so long. > both of those companies have been bleeding money for their entire existence They subsidized rides, so that inflated the market size. Waymo probably needs that larger market size to get enough volume, but I'm not actually sure. > Waymo doesn’t seem like they have a big competitive advantage in self-driving technology Hard disagree here. It feels like when Apple launched the first iPhone, and someone demoed a feature phone with a resistive touchscreen and said "no competitive advantage."
- mechagodzilla 4y ago
  You really feel like they have a huge competitive advantage over GM/Cruise and Tesla, who can and do produce millions of cars a year, and can readily monetize their 'imperfect-but-rapidly-improving' self-driving car technology?
  - sidibe 4y ago
    They do seem to have an advantage in self driving technology not manufacturing. Which is fine because they're not trying to be a mass manufacturer. Manufacturing cars is a different problem they aren't interested in, but I think self driving require a lot of tech that they have a natural advantage in as part of Alphabet (besides having more money available to them and having been working on it for much longer). For example the Dojo stuff that Tesla seems to think is useful. They claimed to be almost finished with that years ago and still don't seem to be using it. In the meantime TPUs have gone through two new generations that Waymo can use en masse. Besides that generally Waymo is a much bigger organization with a much bigger budget than the part of Tesla that is working on FSD

dehrmann 4y ago

> But take Uber and Lyft for example - their drivers probably net well under $20/hr I agree, but this isn't sustainable. You can only depend on people screwing up the math on their net pay for so long. > both of those companies have been bleeding money for their entire existence They subsidized rides, so that inflated the market size. Waymo probably needs that larger market size to get enough volume, but I'm not actually sure. > Waymo doesn’t seem like they have a big competitive advantage in self-driving technology Hard disagree here. It feels like when Apple launched the first iPhone, and someone demoed a feature phone with a resistive touchscreen and said "no competitive advantage."

mechagodzilla 4y ago
You really feel like they have a huge competitive advantage over GM/Cruise and Tesla, who can and do produce millions of cars a year, and can readily monetize their 'imperfect-but-rapidly-improving' self-driving car technology?
- sidibe 4y ago
  They do seem to have an advantage in self driving technology not manufacturing. Which is fine because they're not trying to be a mass manufacturer. Manufacturing cars is a different problem they aren't interested in, but I think self driving require a lot of tech that they have a natural advantage in as part of Alphabet (besides having more money available to them and having been working on it for much longer). For example the Dojo stuff that Tesla seems to think is useful. They claimed to be almost finished with that years ago and still don't seem to be using it. In the meantime TPUs have gone through two new generations that Waymo can use en masse. Besides that generally Waymo is a much bigger organization with a much bigger budget than the part of Tesla that is working on FSD