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What Waymo is doing is very localized and really only suitable for self-driving taxis and not normal cars. Not clear if that would help GM to sell more cars in
by Wytwwww 2y ago
What Waymo is doing is very localized and really only suitable for self-driving taxis and not normal cars. Not clear if that would help GM to sell more cars in the short to medium term (and obviously their execs have no reason to care about anything else).
- throwaway48476 2y agoA taxi is a car. The taxi industry is by itself profitable. GM should be in thr business of making money, with or without cars.
- bobthepanda 2y agothere's a significantly lower volume of taxis sold than personal cars sold, and if taxis got bigger in the way the self driving utopians foresaw, it would significantly cut into their personal car sales.
- throwaway48476 2y agoCar sales in the US go down every year and have since the 90s, were past peak car. They need to find a new market.
- floxy 2y agoI'm not seeing that trend in this data: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA ...maybe you are meaning something more specific?
- dgfitz 2y agoI think the brave throwaway48476 doesn’t have a source.
- throwaway48476 2y agohttps://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DAUPSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DAUPSA This had the slope I remember.
- bobthepanda 2y agoa lot of Detroit's manufacturing these days is in Canada and Mexico.
- hibikir 2y agoHe is right if you look at cars, vs vehicles, but that's due to sales moving to larger vehicles that don't count as cars. But when it comes to self driving or electrification, the difference between car and truck isn't significant. Therefore, vehicles sales being up is what matters.
- tzs 2y agoMaybe the meant sales per capita? The US population at the end of that data was 1.5 times what it was at the beginning, but the sales haven't gone up anywhere near 1.5 times.
- Retric 2y agoHe's probably thinking of this graph of car sales: https://www.statista.com/statistics/199974/us-car-sales-since-1951/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/199974/us-car-sales-sinc... But, buyers are moving from cars to SUV's.
- Wytwwww 2y agoIt does still show that Americans are buying significantly less cars per capita than they did back in e.g. mid to late 80s. So the market is only stagnant because of population growth. Add Tesla and other companies that are making EVs and it doesn't look that great for GM anymore.
- PKop 2y agoWhy make something up like this?
- jfoster 2y agoIf taxis got bigger it would cut into personal sales, yes, but it creates a new revenue stream whereby they take a cut of every ride. The price anchor in that new revenue stream traditionally accounts for the cost of having a human driver, which a self-driving car doesn't need, so they would likely be off to a really good start in terms of profitability. Especially considering they have already paid for a significant amount of the R&D.
- bobthepanda 2y agothat's a sunk cost fallacy and that assumes that the software spending on Cruise is salvageable. They never really restarted Cruise robotaxis after suspending the testing last year.
- jfoster 2y agoThat's true. Their technology direction is probably not efficient. You can see something similar happening with Waymo. If it were actually scalable & in sight of a promising ROI, why wouldn't Alphabet fund it themselves rather than bringing in outside investment?
- bryanlarsen 2y agoAs long as passenger miles stay equivalent, switching from personal cars to taxis would not significantly reduce car sales. Every car sold does about 100,000 to 250,000 passenger miles. Every taxi does about 200,000 to 500,000 miles. Due to deadheading, a taxi does almost 2 miles for every passenger mile.
- Wytwwww 2y agoThat's an entirely new market for them. They are struggling even in their core area of expertise and trying to compete against Waymo, Uber, Lyft etc. would be like flying to the moon for them.