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I didn’t think I’d be so pro Waymo but anecdotally I had a fantastic experience with one recently. I was at a music show very late ~1-2am in SF and walked out
by willio58 11mo ago
I didn’t think I’d be so pro Waymo but anecdotally I had a fantastic experience with one recently.
I was at a music show very late ~1-2am in SF and walked out to grab an uber to the airbnb I was staying at. I kept getting assigned an uber, then I’d wait 10 minutes, then they’d cancel. Rinse and repeat for 30 minutes, mind you I even resorted to calling Lyfts at the same time and nothing bit. Then I say screw it and download Waymo. 1 minute and it’s accepted my ride, and I know it’s not going to cancel because it’s a robot. 3 minutes and it picks me up. The car is clean, quiet, I can play my own music in it via Spotify, and it’s driving honestly more safely than some uber drivers I’ve had in SF. It’s one of the few things where the end result actually lives up to the promise from a tech company.
- bitpush 11mo agoCurious why didn't you try Waymo until then? Was it just that it never had a reason to, or was something holding you back? From my experience, lot of people actively seek out Waymo if it is available.
- willio58 11mo agoI don’t live in SF, or any place with Waymo. So I really just hadn’t downloaded the app yet
- poszlem 11mo agoNot saying this HAS to happen. But I remember when Ubers were clean, quiet, cheap too. I think you are just looking at a product before the enshittification, when they still have to pretend they care about your comfort.
- Rodeoclash 11mo agoIt will undoubtedly get enshittifed in its own way, probably higher prices, but at least it will be reliable when booked. Ubers seem to be a crap shoot these days if they're actually going to come and get you.
- virtue3 11mo agothe same exact problems we had with Taxis. Sigh.
- foooorsyth 11mo agoHad so many Boston cabs not show up for rides to the airport growing up. Uber was such a breath of fresh air…until it wasn’t anymore.
- Analemma_ 11mo agoI can't guarantee that Waymo won't be enshittified, but one fundamental difference with Uber is that Waymo doesn't need to compete in the labor market for drivers. When the low end of the labor market got red hot in 2023-24, that's when Uber prices climbed rapidly because drivers had other options; Waymo won't have this problem. It won't be affected by other things like ever-rising health care costs or local regulations guaranteeing driver wage floors either.
- sneak 11mo agoUber, when it was launched, was limos only, and would come (with ETA) when cabs would not. It was expensive. The story they told is that they were unable to get a ride. That’s not enshittification, that’s simply scammers on the platform not doing their job. That won’t happen with robots. They might raise the prices, or clean the cars less frequently, but if it shows up and runs the program, it won’t ever get worse than that.
- explodes 11mo agoIn-Ride Ads coming soon to a car ride near you
- fragmede 11mo agocoming soon? An ipad strapped to the back of the passenger seat headrest is already here for drivers that choose to do that.
- astrange 11mo agoUber still is like that if you choose that option. It just defaults to UberX because that's cheaper. I dunno, I've never been in a dirty Uber/Lyft. But yes, I originally switched to them because Bay Area cabs just will not pick you up if they don't feel like it.
- davidw 11mo agoI wonder what the non-subsidized price of a Waymo ride would be.
- whatshisface 11mo agoLower prices for recommended destinations, ads played during trip, LLM engages the customer.
- tonyhart7 11mo agoearlier price is steep because they still have huge RnD cost but if we scale that to one planet, it would been cheaper in the long run
- nemothekid 11mo agoAs I understand it, unless the fleet size dramatically increases, the cost of a ride is completely determined by supply/demand.
- davidw 11mo agoHow long does it take to recoup the cost of the automobile and all the tech stuff they add to it?
- nemothekid 11mo agoAs I understand it, whatever it costs, is strictly less than the market dynamics of providing the ride today. There is probably some market equilibrium where they could reasonably provide <5 minute pickups for waymo users that would both cover the cost of the automobile and still be less than the price of an uber today.
- fragmede 11mo agoYou'd have to account for the billions of dollars has Google spent since the first Darpa Grand Challenge in 2004.
- conradev 11mo agoYou're not allowed to smoke cigarettes in a Waymo, whereas UberX drivers are allowed to, I believe, off the clock. I do worry in general about what the enshittification of Waymo will look like, though.
- krat0sprakhar 11mo ago> then I’d wait 10 minutes, then they’d cancel. Rinse and repeat for 30 minutes, This is such a common problem in SF (esp in odd times / from the airport). Waymo has been a lifesaver in these situations.
- tudelo 11mo agoI don't know what it is but in basically every major airport I have struggled to get an uber/lyft. I expect at minimum one cancellation...
- wtfwhateven 11mo agoSame. I assume it depends on the destination Person wants to go somewhat far from airport? That's more time on this single ride and less time pocketing peak demand money
- decimalenough 11mo agoIn many cities this is solved with the "Uber rank" system, where you simply get in the first car in line, give the driver a code, and then it loads up your journey. Fast and avoids any hassles with drivers rejecting your destination.
- wffurr 11mo agoOh they reinvented taxi stands. The code for a pre programmed destination in the app is actually a nice touch.
- fragmede 11mo agoWait, shit, that's amazing. How did they do that? I mean, not how did they write the code to match when given the code (obviously the driver should scan the rider's QR code), but how did Uber get laws changed to allow them to do this obvious reimplementation of a taxi stand when it's technically illegal under taxi laws.
- wffurr 11mo agoTrying to find a specific ride hail driver at the airport seems like a huge waste of time. Just go to the taxi stand.
- gcheong 11mo ago"I know it’s not going to cancel because it’s a robot" I won't be at all surprised when they start calculating their profits in real-time, if they aren't already, and cancelling or delaying trips that are deemed unprofitable in the moment. They are robots after all.
- bryanlarsen 11mo agoWaymo already does that through its surge pricing mechanism and limited availability of cars at busy times. And if they really don't want to serve you they'd just not let you book.
- maxerickson 11mo agoNo 3rd party arbitrage, much reduced pressure to accept fares they don't want (there's probably still some).
- davidw 11mo agoI took one in SF on a rainy, dark night when I was visiting a year ago. I was pretty impressed. That's not an easy city to navigate even on a sunny day and it did fine.
- kilroy123 11mo agoThe same exact thing happened to me last time I was in San Fran. I wanted uber because it was cheaper. Ended up taking a Waymo for more because no one else would take me.
- mlmonkey 11mo agoI once had a Waymo cancel on me too! I was pretty bummed: dang, let down by a robotaxi too?!?!? To be fair, it has happened only once.
- Ferret7446 11mo agoMaybe the last rider puked in it or something?
- ohyoutravel 11mo agoThis is what radicalized me. “Uber is 4 minutes away” so I call them, and it tells me it’s trying to find drivers for the next 6-8 minutes, then a driver is selected and they are 11 minutes away, then they sit at their location for 4-5 minutes, then they start moving toward me, then they’re 5 minutes away and cancel and uber changes to finding me a ride. Infuriating.
- mat_b 11mo agoSame here. This is the exact reason why I will use Waymo before Uber now. I wanted to support human drivers but they let me down too often. I pick robots now.
- xtracto 11mo agoAnd that happens everywhere and with every ride app. Here in Mexico we have DiDi and Uber and we have the same crap. It's human nature. That's why taking a Waymo in LA left me without words... like traveling 10 years in the future. And you dont have to deal with all that crap. I hope Waymo squashes all the competition. BTW after getting back from LA I increased my GOOG position. Waymo is so groundbreaking and it is THERE.
- JuniperMesos 11mo agoIf you're playing it via Spotify, it's not your music, it's Spotify's. Waymo is cool technology but I am disappointed at how the app requires a Google account plus access to google play services on an Android phone, and how the streaming music feature requires some kind of protocol that only Spotify and some proprietary Google music app support. All of my music is stored on a personal server that I stream to my phone via Jellyfin, and this does not work in a Waymo.
- wilg 11mo agoIt's not your music unless you own the copyright, even if its on a disc or drive.
- HackerBarrel 11mo ago[dead]
- willio58 11mo agoYeah it was a little odd how I had to connect things, like I definitely would have preferred a simple Bluetooth connection so I could just play truly whatever is on my phone.
- Neywiny 11mo agoSeeing a lot of people confused on why drivers do this. What I was told after it happened to me is that I was getting an Uber at the busiest time of the week (Friday afternoon) and going a few miles (I lived near an airport at the time). Others were going much further, so drivers wanted those. But they can't deny the ride, that dings their account. So they do that garbage to annoy everybody instead. Meaning, maybe, your ride just wasn't worth it for them. Robots don't have salaries but also Waymo I guess has no systematic issue that causes such a mess in the first place
- ianmabie 11mo agoUber has over time had to relax a lot of the marketplace management practices that reduce the incidence of experiences like this. Can’t penalize drivers for cancelling / ignoring requests because it starts to erode their argument around drivers being independent contractors. So of course the quality of the product degrades to the point where now it’s going to accelerate the move away from human drivers.