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> Though there’s no driver, each ride is supported by staff at a Waymo site that can be summoned if a car runs into trouble. Unless they have multiple rides lo

> Though there’s no driver, each ride is supported by staff at a Waymo site that can be summoned if a car runs into trouble. Unless they have multiple rides looked after by a staff, what are they planning to save by not offering a driver? Also, is there any path to profitability given how many billions were poured into the technology? Not that I care so much though, Alphabet has enough profitable ventures to recoup otherwise.

pengaru 3y ago
I think it goes without saying that the remote observer likely sits at something resembling a trading desk with a wall of LCD panels, monitoring heaps of vehicles like a glorified security guard. It'd be interesting to know what the permissible overcommit ratio is though, if there even is a limit codified by the state/city somewhere.
jsnell 3y ago
Of course there's not one on-duty staffer per car. You'd only need that many people if all rides required human support at exactly the same time. But in reality, most rides wouldn't require it at all. Even if there's likely to be some correlation between support requests, it'd be all cars on one street or block needing help at the same time, not all cars in the same city. > Also, is there any path to profitability given how many billions were poured into the technology? Sure, let's do it back of the envelope. First, the unit economies. Let's assume that a taxi is driven for 16 hours per day (two 8 hour shifts), and the average wage for a driver is $15 / hour. That works out to 16 hours / day * $15 / hour * 365 days/year = $87600/year. This is how much less it costs to operate a self-driving car is than one driven by a human. Since human-operated taxis won't be running at a loss, this means a self-driving taxi would make a minimum of ~$90k/year profit if it got as many drives as a human. Would they get as many drives? Would people prefer a self-driving taxi over a human-driven one? At least if the self-driving taxi is cheaper, I don't see why not. It'd be easy for the self-driving taxis to undercut human drivers on price, while still remaining very profitable. The big challenge is the service area, where self-driving cars currently have no flexibility. The unit economies seem to check out. Is the market big enough to run this as a proper business, or is it depending on unrealistic growth? The numbers I'm finding aren't super consistent, but it seems that the taxi + ride-sharing business is something like $50B-$100B / year just in the US. The addressable market is definitely sufficiently large to pay for billions in R&D. So really it's just a question of how fast they can scale it up, and how quickly the competition catches up.
- abhayhegde 3y ago
  > That works out to 16 hours / day $15 / hour * 365 days/year = $87600/year.* True, but they also have to pay the staff who is monitoring the cars. Maybe 10 cars have one staff? For 250 cars, there should be a team of 25. Maybe they earn a year as much as one car saves? i.e. nearly 90k/year. So, that still works out profitable.
  - taurath 3y ago
    Staff to clean the cars. Staff to refuel the cars. The cars themselves. The administrative and technology teams to ensure the cars work, logistics work. Teams to handle incidents. Replacing that $35/hr driver gets pretty difficult unless a lot of things are all in place at once.
- tzs 3y ago
  > Of course there's not one on-duty staffer per car. You'd only need that many people if all rides required human support at exactly the same time. Now I'm curious what happens when a lot of cars need support at the same time, and not enough support people are available. For instance say SF gets magnitude 8+ earthquake. That could cause a lot of problems for traffic, probably including many things that would confuse current self-driving systems. So say you are in a Waymo, such a thing happens, and your Waymo is having problems. You decide you'd like to abandon the ride and proceed on foot. Is is safe to just open the door and leave? Or do you have to do something locally to tell the Waymo you want to immediately exit, so that it doesn't decide to start moving while you are getting out? Or does it automatically stop and stay stopped while the door is open?
  - eklitzke 3y ago
    There is a button in the app and also on touchscreens (accessible from both front and rear seats) that you can use to ask the car to pullover as soon as possible. You can exit the vehicle this way if you think it's unsafe.
deleted 3y ago
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pengaru 3y ago

I think it goes without saying that the remote observer likely sits at something resembling a trading desk with a wall of LCD panels, monitoring heaps of vehicles like a glorified security guard. It'd be interesting to know what the permissible overcommit ratio is though, if there even is a limit codified by the state/city somewhere.

jsnell 3y ago

Of course there's not one on-duty staffer per car. You'd only need that many people if all rides required human support at exactly the same time. But in reality, most rides wouldn't require it at all. Even if there's likely to be some correlation between support requests, it'd be all cars on one street or block needing help at the same time, not all cars in the same city. > Also, is there any path to profitability given how many billions were poured into the technology? Sure, let's do it back of the envelope. First, the unit economies. Let's assume that a taxi is driven for 16 hours per day (two 8 hour shifts), and the average wage for a driver is $15 / hour. That works out to 16 hours / day * $15 / hour * 365 days/year = $87600/year. This is how much less it costs to operate a self-driving car is than one driven by a human. Since human-operated taxis won't be running at a loss, this means a self-driving taxi would make a minimum of ~$90k/year profit if it got as many drives as a human. Would they get as many drives? Would people prefer a self-driving taxi over a human-driven one? At least if the self-driving taxi is cheaper, I don't see why not. It'd be easy for the self-driving taxis to undercut human drivers on price, while still remaining very profitable. The big challenge is the service area, where self-driving cars currently have no flexibility. The unit economies seem to check out. Is the market big enough to run this as a proper business, or is it depending on unrealistic growth? The numbers I'm finding aren't super consistent, but it seems that the taxi + ride-sharing business is something like $50B-$100B / year just in the US. The addressable market is definitely sufficiently large to pay for billions in R&D. So really it's just a question of how fast they can scale it up, and how quickly the competition catches up.

abhayhegde 3y ago
> That works out to 16 hours / day $15 / hour * 365 days/year = $87600/year.* True, but they also have to pay the staff who is monitoring the cars. Maybe 10 cars have one staff? For 250 cars, there should be a team of 25. Maybe they earn a year as much as one car saves? i.e. nearly 90k/year. So, that still works out profitable.
- taurath 3y ago
  Staff to clean the cars. Staff to refuel the cars. The cars themselves. The administrative and technology teams to ensure the cars work, logistics work. Teams to handle incidents. Replacing that $35/hr driver gets pretty difficult unless a lot of things are all in place at once.
tzs 3y ago
> Of course there's not one on-duty staffer per car. You'd only need that many people if all rides required human support at exactly the same time. Now I'm curious what happens when a lot of cars need support at the same time, and not enough support people are available. For instance say SF gets magnitude 8+ earthquake. That could cause a lot of problems for traffic, probably including many things that would confuse current self-driving systems. So say you are in a Waymo, such a thing happens, and your Waymo is having problems. You decide you'd like to abandon the ride and proceed on foot. Is is safe to just open the door and leave? Or do you have to do something locally to tell the Waymo you want to immediately exit, so that it doesn't decide to start moving while you are getting out? Or does it automatically stop and stay stopped while the door is open?
- eklitzke 3y ago
  There is a button in the app and also on touchscreens (accessible from both front and rear seats) that you can use to ask the car to pullover as soon as possible. You can exit the vehicle this way if you think it's unsafe.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]