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Waymo _might_ be the sole survivor here... they are ABSOLUTELY trying their damndest with it. It's remarkable to not go a single day without seeing a driverless

Waymo _might_ be the sole survivor here... they are ABSOLUTELY trying their damndest with it. It's remarkable to not go a single day without seeing a driverless Waymo doing its thing. (I live in Central Phoenix, they're _everywhere_.) The core concept is being proven pretty well, in markets with good weather and good roads at least... whether they can achieve some sort of critical mass that allows them to recoup any of the investment, even on a single capitalized vehicle... who knows. I've heard each Jag costs ~$250k fully loaded... that's a lot of ~$14-on-average trips before breakeven, and obviously the trips aren't free. That all being said, riding in one feels like the actual future, and if they close in on this first-mover advantage and keep on keeping on, and strengthen their Uber integration, and open in more and more markets... there's a real chance they establish themselves and make this thing actually capture a significant portion of the trip economy. That being said, it's not generalized, so opening markets is expensive because they're all individually trained for each mile of road in the market, I expect they'll be functionally useless in bad winters (but that's not a dealbreaker, per se), and those operating expenses remain high. Though I do expect we'll begin to see those lower, now that they're so deep into the proof of the concept. (They're finally starting highway driving here in PHX, which is really the last hill to climb.)

Workaccount2 3y ago
I always imagined Google licensing the tech as opposed to spinning up a fully fledged national taxi service.
- clhodapp 3y ago
  Interesting. I could imagine Uber mortgaging their whole market cap to acquire Waymo as a lifeline to staying relevant in the long term. They would essentially be "buying" what has always been their long-term product vision.
- rogerbinns 3y ago
  The most valuable owner in this space is whoever you communicate with to tell them where you want to go. They get to offer you a price, they get to offer you alternative destinations, and they get to offer you "deals". For example that means that a different supermarket can make an offer you come to them instead, or you can be offered a different price should a different route be taken, a ride share happen, a journey delayed or brought forward, and numerous other possibilities. It isn't too dissimilar to typing what you are interested in to a search engine. That will be extremely lucrative. But for it to work, that entity will have to have ultimate control over where the vehicle goes. Everybody is going to want to have that ultimate control, and not cede it to someone else. That would make licensing not really work out since Google would retain control.
  - resolutebat 3y ago
    Color me skeptical, but I've never gotten in a car without having decided my destination first. I don't go to "any supermarket", I go to Supermarket X because they have the goods I need at a price I accept or the best promos that week or whatever. If letting your rideshare company decide your destination was really a thing, why wouldn't Uber be doing it already be doing it with human drivers?
    - d0gsg0w00f 3y ago
      > I've never gotten in a car without having decided my destination first. Not yet... > If letting your rideshare company decide your destination was really a thing, why wouldn't Uber be doing it already be doing it with human drivers? Because Uber isn't an advertising company. They're still chasing fares like scrubs
      - jeffbee 3y ago
        Honestly I have no idea why you are attracting downvotes. This feature seems inevitable, and arguably desirable. I am sitting here trying to use Maps to figure out if there are any pizza places that are open in my city right now, and if I could summon a car with the destination vaguely set to "pizza" and be presented with options, that might be OK, even futuristic.
        d0gsg0w00f 3y ago
        "Jimbo's Pizza will pay for your fare! Should I place the order now using your card on file?"
      - yugioh3 3y ago
        agreed. adding discoverability and reviews of Google Maps with a self driving ride share button would be a great combo. i switch between maps and Uber apps to accomplish this currently.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- TulliusCicero 3y ago
  I'm sure they'll license it out eventually, but if it only works in a few metros then it's too early. They need it working in more places for it to be worth it to license probably.
ra7 3y ago
> I've heard each Jag costs ~$250k fully loaded They said it costs as much as a “moderately equipped S-Class” 3-4 years ago. At the time, that would be ~$140k. That includes the base car cost, sensor hardware, compute, redundant vehicle systems and their integration. So not quite $250k, but still steep. I think the Waymo-Geely robotaxis coming next year will be interesting cost-wise. > That being said, it's not generalized, so opening markets is expensive because they're all individually trained for each mile of road in the market This is a misconception. The Waymo Driver is, in fact, designed to be generalizable. There some steps like mapping and initial validation in each market, but the same software runs on Waymo vehicles in every city. It’s definitely not individually trained for each mile in each market.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  There's a significant amount of cope involved when someone steps up to say that Waymo only works on rails, doesn't work in conditions where they have operated for years, etc. It is necessary to continue believing that Tesla is still in this race.
  - ra7 3y ago
    Yeah, there’s a mind boggling amount of misinformation about Waymo. I’m sure it’s driven by financial and emotional interest in Tesla. It’s strange.
- disillusioned 3y ago
  > It’s definitely not individually trained for each mile in each market. Oh, that's very interesting. Being in the test/training market, and having read that they were training on every mile while they were here, I thought that was a key differentiator, but if it _is_ generalizable, that's absolutely huge. (And living here, during training, we'd see trains of 5-6 Waymos cruising down the streets of our neighborhood, so it kind of tracked with what I'd already heard from their videos and posts.) Thanks for the correction. It's amazing what they've accomplished, and it's also a blast to show out-of-towners who have no idea this is _widely available_ here in Phoenix.
clhodapp 3y ago
I've heard each Jag costs ~$250k fully loaded... that's a lot of ~$14-on-average trips before breakeven My math says that's about 25 trips per day to break even in two years (modulo maintenance costs).
- microtherion 3y ago
  Not to forget energy costs.
xnx 3y ago
> I expect they'll be functionally useless in bad winters Google expanded testing in Buffalo, NY in November 2023, including new sensor hardware: https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1aedrmy/new_sensor_rack_spotted_on_waymo_in_buffalo/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1aedrmy/ne...
TulliusCicero 3y ago
They've been testing in snow markets in winter at least occasionally for many years. It makes sense to start with easier markets to a certain extent...though SF is definitely not an easy market in terms of urban design/clutter. It would've been way easier for them to follow up Phoenix with Vegas. If they can handle SF, then aside from weather they can probably handle just about any other city in the US.
renewiltord 3y ago
Yeah, but wintry places are mostly useless. The Bay Area and the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area see some $2 trillion in GDP. That's more than 15 states put together. New York City and Chicago are big economic centers, of course, but they have good public transit. So you can make a pretty big business just pretending winter doesn't exist.
mustacheemperor 3y ago
I really hope Waymo succeeds, or at the very least survives in its current markets. It is so much more comfortable, convenient, and safe than traditional ride share. I switched to more or less only using Waymo for ride-share in SF after I got into the beta last year, and almost without exception every Uber or Lyft ride I have had to take since then for timing, availability, or route reasons has been some kind of debacle. Ranging from just an unclean and odd-smelling car to a ride my partner and I had to end early with the "pull over now" button when the clearly intoxicated driver missed multiple exits and slid on and off the highway median figuring out what to do. By the way, that driver was a "Platinum" tier driver per the Uber app. I reported what happened in detail in a message to support, specifically using the safety issue area of the app, and got back an automated message explaining to me that my credit card charge differed from the amount shown onscreen because the ride ended early. I have previously ranted at length on HN about the nasty dark patterns Lyft uses to attempt to trick you into using their "priority pickup", which is always slower than promised and condescends to you with fake "just a few more seconds" messages while it waits for a driver. Recently, my Uber app has begun auto-selecting Black cars for no conceivable reason, except that it does this after 10pm on the weekends when it's more likely I'm in a rush and/or sleepy and/or intoxicated. The user experience of Uber and Lyft has gotten so poor it feels like outright hostility from these apps towards the users. I've certainly had multiple drivers who behaved outright hostile to their customers. By comparison, the Waymo experience is perfect.
- solardev 3y ago
  How is it so bad for you? I've had 500+ Lyft rides over 7+ years and never had an issue with a single driver...?
  - mustacheemperor 3y ago
    The jarringly bad nature of my recent experiences with Lyft/Uber compared to Waymo has likely inspired some hyberpole, but - I have been an Uber and Lyft rider for almost 10 years myself. Back then I was at town meetings in Syracuse, NY advocating for Uber to come to town. I know the experience can be good, but it seems like over the last couple years the experience has gotten considerably worse on average. Experiencing Waymo has also altered my standards. Now I really notice how often the car is dirty and unkempt, stinks of pot or cigarette smoke, or the tire light is on, or the driver is handling the car poorly. Waymo is usually the same price, and none of that ever happens. If they pull this off I don't see the business model for human based rideshare surviving unless the cost of AV rides skyrockets once they need to be independently commercially viable. I also live right off the highway, so I think I am more prone to getting people who pick up my ride on the way to or from somewhere else and then get upset about where they have to go. Pretty much the only place I need an Uber to these days is over the bridge to the East Bay when BART is not realistic, which is usually because I'm in a rush. One of my recent trips I wound up late anyway, because the first driver who pulled into my complex explained to me "because the uber app gives me these bad rides" I should cancel the ride for him, and pay a fee, because it was so unreasonable for me to expect him to deliver me to the destination I had called the ride for. Edit: on another bridge trip, my driver was excited to show me his 'tiktok famous' friend on his dash mounted iPad while we went over the bridge. Diamond driver, perfect rating, surfing social media with one hand and steering with the other. Maybe Waymo has just made me picky and most rideshare users now expect to share use of an iPad with the driver in traffic

Workaccount2 3y ago

I always imagined Google licensing the tech as opposed to spinning up a fully fledged national taxi service.

clhodapp 3y ago
Interesting. I could imagine Uber mortgaging their whole market cap to acquire Waymo as a lifeline to staying relevant in the long term. They would essentially be "buying" what has always been their long-term product vision.
rogerbinns 3y ago
The most valuable owner in this space is whoever you communicate with to tell them where you want to go. They get to offer you a price, they get to offer you alternative destinations, and they get to offer you "deals". For example that means that a different supermarket can make an offer you come to them instead, or you can be offered a different price should a different route be taken, a ride share happen, a journey delayed or brought forward, and numerous other possibilities. It isn't too dissimilar to typing what you are interested in to a search engine. That will be extremely lucrative. But for it to work, that entity will have to have ultimate control over where the vehicle goes. Everybody is going to want to have that ultimate control, and not cede it to someone else. That would make licensing not really work out since Google would retain control.
- resolutebat 3y ago
  Color me skeptical, but I've never gotten in a car without having decided my destination first. I don't go to "any supermarket", I go to Supermarket X because they have the goods I need at a price I accept or the best promos that week or whatever. If letting your rideshare company decide your destination was really a thing, why wouldn't Uber be doing it already be doing it with human drivers?
  - d0gsg0w00f 3y ago
    > I've never gotten in a car without having decided my destination first. Not yet... > If letting your rideshare company decide your destination was really a thing, why wouldn't Uber be doing it already be doing it with human drivers? Because Uber isn't an advertising company. They're still chasing fares like scrubs
    - jeffbee 3y ago
      Honestly I have no idea why you are attracting downvotes. This feature seems inevitable, and arguably desirable. I am sitting here trying to use Maps to figure out if there are any pizza places that are open in my city right now, and if I could summon a car with the destination vaguely set to "pizza" and be presented with options, that might be OK, even futuristic.
      - d0gsg0w00f 3y ago
        "Jimbo's Pizza will pay for your fare! Should I place the order now using your card on file?"
    - yugioh3 3y ago
      agreed. adding discoverability and reviews of Google Maps with a self driving ride share button would be a great combo. i switch between maps and Uber apps to accomplish this currently.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
TulliusCicero 3y ago
I'm sure they'll license it out eventually, but if it only works in a few metros then it's too early. They need it working in more places for it to be worth it to license probably.

ra7 3y ago

> I've heard each Jag costs ~$250k fully loaded They said it costs as much as a “moderately equipped S-Class” 3-4 years ago. At the time, that would be ~$140k. That includes the base car cost, sensor hardware, compute, redundant vehicle systems and their integration. So not quite $250k, but still steep. I think the Waymo-Geely robotaxis coming next year will be interesting cost-wise. > That being said, it's not generalized, so opening markets is expensive because they're all individually trained for each mile of road in the market This is a misconception. The Waymo Driver is, in fact, designed to be generalizable. There some steps like mapping and initial validation in each market, but the same software runs on Waymo vehicles in every city. It’s definitely not individually trained for each mile in each market.

jeffbee 3y ago
There's a significant amount of cope involved when someone steps up to say that Waymo only works on rails, doesn't work in conditions where they have operated for years, etc. It is necessary to continue believing that Tesla is still in this race.
- ra7 3y ago
  Yeah, there’s a mind boggling amount of misinformation about Waymo. I’m sure it’s driven by financial and emotional interest in Tesla. It’s strange.
disillusioned 3y ago
> It’s definitely not individually trained for each mile in each market. Oh, that's very interesting. Being in the test/training market, and having read that they were training on every mile while they were here, I thought that was a key differentiator, but if it _is_ generalizable, that's absolutely huge. (And living here, during training, we'd see trains of 5-6 Waymos cruising down the streets of our neighborhood, so it kind of tracked with what I'd already heard from their videos and posts.) Thanks for the correction. It's amazing what they've accomplished, and it's also a blast to show out-of-towners who have no idea this is _widely available_ here in Phoenix.

clhodapp 3y ago

I've heard each Jag costs ~$250k fully loaded... that's a lot of ~$14-on-average trips before breakeven My math says that's about 25 trips per day to break even in two years (modulo maintenance costs).

microtherion 3y ago
Not to forget energy costs.

xnx 3y ago

> I expect they'll be functionally useless in bad winters Google expanded testing in Buffalo, NY in November 2023, including new sensor hardware: https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1aedrmy/new_sensor_rack_spotted_on_waymo_in_buffalo/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1aedrmy/ne...

TulliusCicero 3y ago

They've been testing in snow markets in winter at least occasionally for many years. It makes sense to start with easier markets to a certain extent...though SF is definitely not an easy market in terms of urban design/clutter. It would've been way easier for them to follow up Phoenix with Vegas. If they can handle SF, then aside from weather they can probably handle just about any other city in the US.

renewiltord 3y ago

Yeah, but wintry places are mostly useless. The Bay Area and the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area see some $2 trillion in GDP. That's more than 15 states put together. New York City and Chicago are big economic centers, of course, but they have good public transit. So you can make a pretty big business just pretending winter doesn't exist.

mustacheemperor 3y ago

I really hope Waymo succeeds, or at the very least survives in its current markets. It is so much more comfortable, convenient, and safe than traditional ride share. I switched to more or less only using Waymo for ride-share in SF after I got into the beta last year, and almost without exception every Uber or Lyft ride I have had to take since then for timing, availability, or route reasons has been some kind of debacle. Ranging from just an unclean and odd-smelling car to a ride my partner and I had to end early with the "pull over now" button when the clearly intoxicated driver missed multiple exits and slid on and off the highway median figuring out what to do. By the way, that driver was a "Platinum" tier driver per the Uber app. I reported what happened in detail in a message to support, specifically using the safety issue area of the app, and got back an automated message explaining to me that my credit card charge differed from the amount shown onscreen because the ride ended early. I have previously ranted at length on HN about the nasty dark patterns Lyft uses to attempt to trick you into using their "priority pickup", which is always slower than promised and condescends to you with fake "just a few more seconds" messages while it waits for a driver. Recently, my Uber app has begun auto-selecting Black cars for no conceivable reason, except that it does this after 10pm on the weekends when it's more likely I'm in a rush and/or sleepy and/or intoxicated. The user experience of Uber and Lyft has gotten so poor it feels like outright hostility from these apps towards the users. I've certainly had multiple drivers who behaved outright hostile to their customers. By comparison, the Waymo experience is perfect.

solardev 3y ago
How is it so bad for you? I've had 500+ Lyft rides over 7+ years and never had an issue with a single driver...?
- mustacheemperor 3y ago
  The jarringly bad nature of my recent experiences with Lyft/Uber compared to Waymo has likely inspired some hyberpole, but - I have been an Uber and Lyft rider for almost 10 years myself. Back then I was at town meetings in Syracuse, NY advocating for Uber to come to town. I know the experience can be good, but it seems like over the last couple years the experience has gotten considerably worse on average. Experiencing Waymo has also altered my standards. Now I really notice how often the car is dirty and unkempt, stinks of pot or cigarette smoke, or the tire light is on, or the driver is handling the car poorly. Waymo is usually the same price, and none of that ever happens. If they pull this off I don't see the business model for human based rideshare surviving unless the cost of AV rides skyrockets once they need to be independently commercially viable. I also live right off the highway, so I think I am more prone to getting people who pick up my ride on the way to or from somewhere else and then get upset about where they have to go. Pretty much the only place I need an Uber to these days is over the bridge to the East Bay when BART is not realistic, which is usually because I'm in a rush. One of my recent trips I wound up late anyway, because the first driver who pulled into my complex explained to me "because the uber app gives me these bad rides" I should cancel the ride for him, and pay a fee, because it was so unreasonable for me to expect him to deliver me to the destination I had called the ride for. Edit: on another bridge trip, my driver was excited to show me his 'tiktok famous' friend on his dash mounted iPad while we went over the bridge. Diamond driver, perfect rating, surfing social media with one hand and steering with the other. Maybe Waymo has just made me picky and most rideshare users now expect to share use of an iPad with the driver in traffic