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Waymo needs competition. Who else is even close to being able to provide it? I'd hate to think Tesla is next in line because they haven't even started a commerc

Waymo needs competition. Who else is even close to being able to provide it? I'd hate to think Tesla is next in line because they haven't even started a commercial pilot program yet.

mfkhalil 2y ago
Zoox (Amazon Subsidiary) should be rolling out soon. They've already done successful test rides and should be launching in Las Vegas next year.
- master_crab 2y ago
  Saw at least one zoox scooting around Vegas last week at Reinvent
  - ytpete 2y ago
    Saw one driving around SF recently too. Not the SUVs they've been testing here for years – but the full custom-built cube-shaped passenger taxi.
Animats 2y ago
> Who else is even close to being able to provide it? Baidu/Apollo, maybe. There are deployed robo-taxis in China. Reviews of driving quality indicate "meh", they are sometimes directly teleoperated to get out of problems, and difficult intersections have fixed cameras the cars can see through.
- standardUser 2y ago
  From what I've read China is forging ahead very successfully, but I assume there would be a lot of friction if they tried to enter the US market, to say the least.
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  Reading from intersection-mounted fixed cameras seems like a valid solution.
  - astrange 2y ago
    Has the issue with all cameras, which is that they don't work when they can't see. Of course, if they're actually a more general kind of sensor but called a camera then it's fine.
fixprix 2y ago
I don't see how Waymo is going to survive the onslaught that is CyberCab. Cheaper to build and operate, more efficient, much faster to build, and deployable across all cities without any manual configuration. The clock is ticking on Waymo, they have 2 years to figure out how to compete otherwise they're cooked. It's very similar to legacy space and internet, the existing players saw SpaceX coming years out, did nothing and got crushed.
- ketzo 2y ago
  Isn’t it kinda the other way around? I feel like the clock starts the first time a CyberCab gives a paid passenger ride, and that seems like quite a ways out — potentially much more than 2 years. And Waymo has that whole time to bring down their costs of construction, learn how to solve problems of scale, and so on. I agree that a CyberCab would have structural advantages if the service were at parity w/ Waymo, but that is a very big hypothetical!
  - kevindamm 2y ago
    More than that, even -- Waymo is already transitioning to having partners that do the operations & maintenance work while they focus on the tech. I read this as a confidence in the tech timeline, strategy, and maturity. Meanwhile, Tesla's strategy is "hype, ???, deal with it." I know which one I'd back.
    - fastball 2y ago
      So I assume you've put your money where your mouth is and own GOOG and not TSLA.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - kortilla 2y ago
      Confidence in the timeline is one read. Lack of confidence and finding partners to shoulder the financial burden at the cost of lower upside is another.
boshalfoshal 2y ago
I think it will be Tesla. Regulatory pressures for them just lifted, and they move faster than all the other driverless companies, courtesy of Elon's fairly hardcore mode of operation. It may not be a perfect driving solution (probably 1:1 teleoperator to car in the beginning), but their go to market speed is undeniably better than Waymo et al. Waymo, Cruise, etc have to map out an entire region and have long rollout timelines. In theory Tesla could say they will deploy in X city, talk with the local government to get necessary approvals, and get it going after a few test drives. Thats the tail, anyway. With that kind of go to market speed you can start acquiring customers pretty easily and start scaling up the business. Its basically the typical SaaS setup - cut some corners for market share and become the defacto player in it after some time. I wouldn't write them out purely out of spite. Their solution is the most conducive to scaling laws, on the ML, operations, and business side.
- upbeat_general 2y ago
  Maybe I'm missing something but are there any current regulations that make it difficult to operate? My understanding was that in many states, it's mostly just paper requirements and not any strict testing, etc.
  - avree 2y ago
    Nov 18 (Reuters) - Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab shares rose more than 5% on Monday after Bloomberg News reported that President-elect Donald Trump's transition team was planning to set up federal regulations for autonomous vehicles. The report comes days after Trump named the automaker's CEO, Elon Musk, as a co-head of the incoming administration's government efficiency department. Trump's team is looking for policy leaders for the transport department to develop a federal regulatory framework, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. Last month, Musk criticized the state-by-state approval process, required for self-driving vehicles, as "incredibly painful", weeks after unveiling a two-seat "Cybercab" robotaxi without a steering wheel and foot pedals, set to go into production in 2026.
    - ytpete 2y ago
Philadelphia 2y ago
There’s no evidence that this is even going to be a viable business model, commercially or technically. There’s no “moat” around it or obvious first mover advantage. It seems very early to worry about competition.
- Shawnj2 2y ago
  I mean Waymo already has competitors, Uber, Lyft, and regular taxis. Right now Uber and Lyft are typically strategically priced to be slightly cheaper than taxis are but I think Uber has enough margin to cut costs to compete with Waymo as they enter more markets, and Waymo needs to get people on board to make robotaxis a real thing people use and to offset their dev costs.
- dpe82 2y ago
  First mover advantages: a) Early technology adopters are more forgiving of minor problems and are your free word-of-mouth marketers. The company benefits from lowered GTM costs. b) Fast, reliable service depends on density; there needs to be enough cars on the road that there's always one available within a few minutes when you open the app; users will develop a habit of choosing whichever provider is reliably faster and that habit will become ingrained, making market entry for later movers more costly. First movers also have the advantage of their early adopters helping pay for their fleet as it's built up; later movers have to flood new markets with subsidized capacity to get to equivalent density. That works (Uber did it for rideshare) but it's expensive. So again: lower GTM costs. Regarding whether this will be a viable market - Lyft/Uber have already demonstrated there's tons of demand for on-demand transportation services, and Waymo in SF is already very popular. One can back-of-the-envelope whether the economics work but generally speaking any time you replace labor with automation in a large market, it does. In the long run though you're right that there isn't a moat that can't be solved with massive capital investment. But you could say the same about many markets; turns out one can have a successful company within a competitive market the old fashioned way.. by just being really good. It's harder, but it works.
lang4d 2y ago
Waymo is also in competition with non AV ride sharing companies. They'll need to make it more cost effective and/or (continue to) deliver higher quality rides
- astrange 2y ago
  They're in competition with the individual drivers, not with the ridesharing companies. The expensive part is owning the cars.
lm28469 2y ago
Didn't Waymo's CEO admit self driving cars were a pipe dream a few years ago ?
- lm28469 2y ago
  Can't edit my comment but seeing the number of downvotes I might as well enlighten a few people: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/alphabet-google-waymo-ceo-john-krafcik-autonomous-cars-wont-ever-be-able-to-drive-in-all-conditions/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/alphabet-google-waymo-ceo...
  - standardUser 2y ago
    That was 6 years ago. I find it odd for a CEO to talk so cautiously (odd but perhaps refreshing), but I'm certainly not holding anyone accountable for what they said in an interview 6 years ago when it relates to a bleeding edge industry.
    - lm28469 2y ago
      Well yes of course accountability clearly isn't a thing at play here, Musk said self driving cars were coming in two years back when I was still studying, that was ~10 years ago... We're still not even close to anything remotely capable of being autonomous, even on sunny straight californian roads... Bring these to switzerland snowy mountain passes or serbian dirt roads lmao > a bleeding edge industry. The only thing that this industry is bleeding is money so far
      - standardUser 2y ago
        Waymo has fully autonomous commercial operations in 5 cities now. Have you been in one? They are amazing. Most taxi/rideshare rides occur in cities, not the snowy mountains of Switzerland. Maybe they never make it to those snowy mountains. Who cares?
        lm28469 2y ago
sixQuarks 2y ago
You have it wrong buddy. Tesla is the one that needs competition, they’re going to have a robotaxi monopoly soon.
- standardUser 2y ago
  Tesla hasn't even launched a pilot program. Cruise has actual commercial road hours logged and Waymo has a fully operational commercial service that keeps expanding. Tesla has a LOT of catching up to do. Cities won't just let them launch a service on a whim. It's going to take years to catch up.
  - sixQuarks 2y ago
    We shall see…
mvkel 2y ago
Have you ridden in a waymo? I've found it to be about 95% as good as FSD, and FSD goes anywhere. I've been very puzzled at people treating FSD as non-existent when it's very reliably good.
- pb7 2y ago
  Yes, I have, it's been than anything else out there and it's not even close. There was never a moment in time that Waymo was not a distant leader despite how competitors wanted to appear.
- jessriedel 2y ago
  I’ve taken a few dozen Waymo rides, but it doesn’t matger because this is not something you can really test as a person. The entire issue is whether you have, say, 7 or 9 nines of reliability (e.g., 10x or 0.1x times more dangerous than a human), and you can’t extrapolate that from how smooth it feels or whatever. FSD doesn’t have that reliability, which is why they don’t let you sleep.

Waymo needs competition. Who else is even close to being able to provide it? I'd hate to think Tesla is next in line because they haven't even started a commercial pilot program yet.

mfkhalil 2y ago

Zoox (Amazon Subsidiary) should be rolling out soon. They've already done successful test rides and should be launching in Las Vegas next year.

master_crab 2y ago
Saw at least one zoox scooting around Vegas last week at Reinvent
- ytpete 2y ago
  Saw one driving around SF recently too. Not the SUVs they've been testing here for years – but the full custom-built cube-shaped passenger taxi.

Animats 2y ago

> Who else is even close to being able to provide it? Baidu/Apollo, maybe. There are deployed robo-taxis in China. Reviews of driving quality indicate "meh", they are sometimes directly teleoperated to get out of problems, and difficult intersections have fixed cameras the cars can see through.

standardUser 2y ago
From what I've read China is forging ahead very successfully, but I assume there would be a lot of friction if they tried to enter the US market, to say the least.
mitthrowaway2 2y ago
Reading from intersection-mounted fixed cameras seems like a valid solution.
- astrange 2y ago
  Has the issue with all cameras, which is that they don't work when they can't see. Of course, if they're actually a more general kind of sensor but called a camera then it's fine.

fixprix 2y ago

I don't see how Waymo is going to survive the onslaught that is CyberCab. Cheaper to build and operate, more efficient, much faster to build, and deployable across all cities without any manual configuration. The clock is ticking on Waymo, they have 2 years to figure out how to compete otherwise they're cooked. It's very similar to legacy space and internet, the existing players saw SpaceX coming years out, did nothing and got crushed.

ketzo 2y ago
Isn’t it kinda the other way around? I feel like the clock starts the first time a CyberCab gives a paid passenger ride, and that seems like quite a ways out — potentially much more than 2 years. And Waymo has that whole time to bring down their costs of construction, learn how to solve problems of scale, and so on. I agree that a CyberCab would have structural advantages if the service were at parity w/ Waymo, but that is a very big hypothetical!
- kevindamm 2y ago
  More than that, even -- Waymo is already transitioning to having partners that do the operations & maintenance work while they focus on the tech. I read this as a confidence in the tech timeline, strategy, and maturity. Meanwhile, Tesla's strategy is "hype, ???, deal with it." I know which one I'd back.
  - fastball 2y ago
    So I assume you've put your money where your mouth is and own GOOG and not TSLA.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - kortilla 2y ago
    Confidence in the timeline is one read. Lack of confidence and finding partners to shoulder the financial burden at the cost of lower upside is another.

boshalfoshal 2y ago

I think it will be Tesla. Regulatory pressures for them just lifted, and they move faster than all the other driverless companies, courtesy of Elon's fairly hardcore mode of operation. It may not be a perfect driving solution (probably 1:1 teleoperator to car in the beginning), but their go to market speed is undeniably better than Waymo et al. Waymo, Cruise, etc have to map out an entire region and have long rollout timelines. In theory Tesla could say they will deploy in X city, talk with the local government to get necessary approvals, and get it going after a few test drives. Thats the tail, anyway. With that kind of go to market speed you can start acquiring customers pretty easily and start scaling up the business. Its basically the typical SaaS setup - cut some corners for market share and become the defacto player in it after some time. I wouldn't write them out purely out of spite. Their solution is the most conducive to scaling laws, on the ML, operations, and business side.

upbeat_general 2y ago
Maybe I'm missing something but are there any current regulations that make it difficult to operate? My understanding was that in many states, it's mostly just paper requirements and not any strict testing, etc.
- avree 2y ago
  Nov 18 (Reuters) - Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab shares rose more than 5% on Monday after Bloomberg News reported that President-elect Donald Trump's transition team was planning to set up federal regulations for autonomous vehicles. The report comes days after Trump named the automaker's CEO, Elon Musk, as a co-head of the incoming administration's government efficiency department. Trump's team is looking for policy leaders for the transport department to develop a federal regulatory framework, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. Last month, Musk criticized the state-by-state approval process, required for self-driving vehicles, as "incredibly painful", weeks after unveiling a two-seat "Cybercab" robotaxi without a steering wheel and foot pedals, set to go into production in 2026.
  - ytpete 2y ago

Philadelphia 2y ago

There’s no evidence that this is even going to be a viable business model, commercially or technically. There’s no “moat” around it or obvious first mover advantage. It seems very early to worry about competition.

Shawnj2 2y ago
I mean Waymo already has competitors, Uber, Lyft, and regular taxis. Right now Uber and Lyft are typically strategically priced to be slightly cheaper than taxis are but I think Uber has enough margin to cut costs to compete with Waymo as they enter more markets, and Waymo needs to get people on board to make robotaxis a real thing people use and to offset their dev costs.
dpe82 2y ago
First mover advantages: a) Early technology adopters are more forgiving of minor problems and are your free word-of-mouth marketers. The company benefits from lowered GTM costs. b) Fast, reliable service depends on density; there needs to be enough cars on the road that there's always one available within a few minutes when you open the app; users will develop a habit of choosing whichever provider is reliably faster and that habit will become ingrained, making market entry for later movers more costly. First movers also have the advantage of their early adopters helping pay for their fleet as it's built up; later movers have to flood new markets with subsidized capacity to get to equivalent density. That works (Uber did it for rideshare) but it's expensive. So again: lower GTM costs. Regarding whether this will be a viable market - Lyft/Uber have already demonstrated there's tons of demand for on-demand transportation services, and Waymo in SF is already very popular. One can back-of-the-envelope whether the economics work but generally speaking any time you replace labor with automation in a large market, it does. In the long run though you're right that there isn't a moat that can't be solved with massive capital investment. But you could say the same about many markets; turns out one can have a successful company within a competitive market the old fashioned way.. by just being really good. It's harder, but it works.

lang4d 2y ago

Waymo is also in competition with non AV ride sharing companies. They'll need to make it more cost effective and/or (continue to) deliver higher quality rides

astrange 2y ago
They're in competition with the individual drivers, not with the ridesharing companies. The expensive part is owning the cars.

lm28469 2y ago

Didn't Waymo's CEO admit self driving cars were a pipe dream a few years ago ?

lm28469 2y ago
Can't edit my comment but seeing the number of downvotes I might as well enlighten a few people: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/alphabet-google-waymo-ceo-john-krafcik-autonomous-cars-wont-ever-be-able-to-drive-in-all-conditions/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/alphabet-google-waymo-ceo...
- standardUser 2y ago
  That was 6 years ago. I find it odd for a CEO to talk so cautiously (odd but perhaps refreshing), but I'm certainly not holding anyone accountable for what they said in an interview 6 years ago when it relates to a bleeding edge industry.
  - lm28469 2y ago
    Well yes of course accountability clearly isn't a thing at play here, Musk said self driving cars were coming in two years back when I was still studying, that was ~10 years ago... We're still not even close to anything remotely capable of being autonomous, even on sunny straight californian roads... Bring these to switzerland snowy mountain passes or serbian dirt roads lmao > a bleeding edge industry. The only thing that this industry is bleeding is money so far
    - standardUser 2y ago
      Waymo has fully autonomous commercial operations in 5 cities now. Have you been in one? They are amazing. Most taxi/rideshare rides occur in cities, not the snowy mountains of Switzerland. Maybe they never make it to those snowy mountains. Who cares?
      - lm28469 2y ago

sixQuarks 2y ago

You have it wrong buddy. Tesla is the one that needs competition, they’re going to have a robotaxi monopoly soon.

standardUser 2y ago
Tesla hasn't even launched a pilot program. Cruise has actual commercial road hours logged and Waymo has a fully operational commercial service that keeps expanding. Tesla has a LOT of catching up to do. Cities won't just let them launch a service on a whim. It's going to take years to catch up.
- sixQuarks 2y ago
  We shall see…

mvkel 2y ago

Have you ridden in a waymo? I've found it to be about 95% as good as FSD, and FSD goes anywhere. I've been very puzzled at people treating FSD as non-existent when it's very reliably good.

pb7 2y ago
Yes, I have, it's been than anything else out there and it's not even close. There was never a moment in time that Waymo was not a distant leader despite how competitors wanted to appear.
jessriedel 2y ago
I’ve taken a few dozen Waymo rides, but it doesn’t matger because this is not something you can really test as a person. The entire issue is whether you have, say, 7 or 9 nines of reliability (e.g., 10x or 0.1x times more dangerous than a human), and you can’t extrapolate that from how smooth it feels or whatever. FSD doesn’t have that reliability, which is why they don’t let you sleep.