6 ms·

Service area: https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9059119?hl=en#DAL https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9059119?hl=en#DAL

matthavener 2mo ago
One admirable part of Waymo's service area in Dallas is it serves areas previously devalued by racist redlining. This is in contrast to Uber's Avride and Tesla's Robotaxi offerings, which stick only to the richer, whiter areas of Dallas https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/03/uber-and-avride-launch-robotaxi-service-in-dallas/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/03/uber-and-avride-launch-rob... https://dallasinnovates.com/tesla-launches-robotaxis-in-dallas-and-houston/ https://dallasinnovates.com/tesla-launches-robotaxis-in-dall...
- judge2020 2mo ago
  I doubt the geofence exclusion is because of the demographics of those areas and not the demand for autonomous vehicles in those areas, although I don't doubt the latter is a result of the former.
  - smt88 2mo ago
    I doubt this is correct. “It’s expensive to be poor” — a lot of people who can’t afford cars (or have bad credit) end up Ubering to/from work every day
    - epolanski 2mo ago
      How can that be anywhere near financially sustainable.
      - Cider9986 2mo ago
        It's not. It's expensive to be poor.
      - reaperducer 2mo ago
        How can that be anywhere near financially sustainable. All you have to do is basic math. Monthly car payment (which is higher if you're poor) + monthly gas spent (which is higher if you buy it in a poor neighborhood) + monthly insurance (which is likely to be higher if you're poor, and/or live in a poor neighborhood) + maintenance is very often far less than what it costs to take a rideshare ride 14 times a week. When I drove for Uber, about 20% of my rides were people commuting to and from work who could not afford a car.
        epolanski 2mo ago
        Aren't you going 20 times per month, twice, that's 40 rides. At an average 25$ you're spending 1'000$/month on Uber.
        reaperducer 2mo ago
        Aren't you going 20 times per week, twice, that's 40 rides. Work 5 days a week = 10 rides. Plus four rides on the weekend, or not. That's why I used 14. Where do you get 40 rides per week? At an average 25$ you're spending 1'000$/month on Uber. Even if someone did 40 rides per week at your posited average of $25/ride, that's $4,000, not $1,000. Are you letting an LLM do math for you?
        deleted 2mo ago
        [deleted]
        surajrmal 2mo ago
        40 rides a month, not week. I'm not sure you're in a position to accuse folks of not doing math when you don't seem to read very well.
        reaperducer 2mo ago
        Read what I quoted. He edited his comment after I replied.
        2mo ago
      - djeastm 2mo ago
        >How can that be anywhere near financially sustainable. It's not and it's indeed a very sad statement on public transport. My father has spent some time in his retirement Uber-ing and said it was shocking to him how many repeat customers he got that were having to spend so much just to get to a minimum wage job.
      - powersurge360 2mo ago
        If you are curious about this, I recommend There’s No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America. It covers how some folks, with no credit, are forced to live in extended stay hotels (where they take cash up front and don’t run credit) which can cost multiple times what rent can cost. If you put the author, Brian Goldstone, into YouTube, you can find some recent news coverage of some of the folks from the book and iirc one of them is Ubering in a lemon, working 60-80 hours a week just to break even. In America, unfortunately, we’ve perfected the debt trap and turned poverty into a profit center. The same equity companies own rental properties, extended stay hotels, and storage locations so they can vertically integrate homelessness.
        fragmede 2mo ago
        The most evil thing I heard was companies like Doordash and Uber buying up data on who has credit card debt, so they know which driver is more desperate for cash, so they can low-ball them and give them a worse offer because they're more likely to take it because they're desperate for it.
        weird-eye-issue 2mo ago
        Wow that's terrible but also pretty smart...
        frenchtoast8 2mo ago
        Where is the proof of any of this? There are too many conspiracy theories about gig work. There was a similar post on HN a few months back[1] based on some anonymous vagueposter on Reddit, again without evidence. Would I be surprised if this is true? Of course not. Should we just start believing random things without any critical thinking? No. ^1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46461563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46461563
        fragmede 2mo ago
        https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
      - heylook 2mo ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
      - DonsDiscountGas 2mo ago
        Carpooling?
- elictronic 2mo ago
  Tesla has fewer miles than I have driven in my lifetime. It’s currently still a half baked product. This might be a story in a few years but today you’re comparing an F150 to a Delorean.
  - fragmede 2mo ago
    How many miles is that?
- JLO64 2mo ago
  This is somewhat similar to the situation here in LA where they service and very often drive through Westlake/MacArthur-Park which undoubtedly low income. I think it’s for practical reasons though, as they’re not allowed to use the freeways here yet. So for people going from rich areas (Bel-Air/Beverly Hills) to DTLA they need to cross/drive through there anyways. Even so, I’ve encountered plenty of people who live in those areas and have been able to take Waymos which is great given how sketchy that area can be…
  - fragmede 2mo ago
    Ish. The problem with Waymos is there's no human driver, so they'll adjust pick up and drop off in a way that could be dangerous for the passenger. A human driver isn't going let a passenger off into a dangerous situation. They'll block traffic to drop the passenger off at their destination instead of a few blocks away in a dangerous neighborhood. Waymo's got the legal go ahead to use freeways, but they're working on some of the subtleties of self-driving on the freeway vs city streets before enabling it for everybody. (Specifically, California car culture is you merge left early instead of staying in the right lane until you have to. Apparently the Waymo driver was staying in the right lane.)
    - holycrapwhodat 2mo ago
      > The problem with Waymos is there's no human driver, so they'll adjust pick up and drop off in a way that could be dangerous for the passenger. A human driver isn't going let a passenger off into a dangerous situation. In this situation, you absolutely can (and are encouraged to) press the support button in the car to talk to a human agent. They have the ability to tell the car to go somewhere it normally wouldn't go for any situation that humans can reason about.

matthavener 2mo ago

One admirable part of Waymo's service area in Dallas is it serves areas previously devalued by racist redlining. This is in contrast to Uber's Avride and Tesla's Robotaxi offerings, which stick only to the richer, whiter areas of Dallas https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/03/uber-and-avride-launch-robotaxi-service-in-dallas/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/03/uber-and-avride-launch-rob... https://dallasinnovates.com/tesla-launches-robotaxis-in-dallas-and-houston/ https://dallasinnovates.com/tesla-launches-robotaxis-in-dall...

judge2020 2mo ago
I doubt the geofence exclusion is because of the demographics of those areas and not the demand for autonomous vehicles in those areas, although I don't doubt the latter is a result of the former.
- smt88 2mo ago
  I doubt this is correct. “It’s expensive to be poor” — a lot of people who can’t afford cars (or have bad credit) end up Ubering to/from work every day
  - epolanski 2mo ago
    How can that be anywhere near financially sustainable.
    - Cider9986 2mo ago
      It's not. It's expensive to be poor.
    - reaperducer 2mo ago
      How can that be anywhere near financially sustainable. All you have to do is basic math. Monthly car payment (which is higher if you're poor) + monthly gas spent (which is higher if you buy it in a poor neighborhood) + monthly insurance (which is likely to be higher if you're poor, and/or live in a poor neighborhood) + maintenance is very often far less than what it costs to take a rideshare ride 14 times a week. When I drove for Uber, about 20% of my rides were people commuting to and from work who could not afford a car.
      - epolanski 2mo ago
        Aren't you going 20 times per month, twice, that's 40 rides. At an average 25$ you're spending 1'000$/month on Uber.
        reaperducer 2mo ago
        Aren't you going 20 times per week, twice, that's 40 rides. Work 5 days a week = 10 rides. Plus four rides on the weekend, or not. That's why I used 14. Where do you get 40 rides per week? At an average 25$ you're spending 1'000$/month on Uber. Even if someone did 40 rides per week at your posited average of $25/ride, that's $4,000, not $1,000. Are you letting an LLM do math for you?
        deleted 2mo ago
        [deleted]
        surajrmal 2mo ago
        40 rides a month, not week. I'm not sure you're in a position to accuse folks of not doing math when you don't seem to read very well.
        reaperducer 2mo ago
        Read what I quoted. He edited his comment after I replied.
        2mo ago
    - djeastm 2mo ago
      >How can that be anywhere near financially sustainable. It's not and it's indeed a very sad statement on public transport. My father has spent some time in his retirement Uber-ing and said it was shocking to him how many repeat customers he got that were having to spend so much just to get to a minimum wage job.
    - powersurge360 2mo ago
      If you are curious about this, I recommend There’s No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America. It covers how some folks, with no credit, are forced to live in extended stay hotels (where they take cash up front and don’t run credit) which can cost multiple times what rent can cost. If you put the author, Brian Goldstone, into YouTube, you can find some recent news coverage of some of the folks from the book and iirc one of them is Ubering in a lemon, working 60-80 hours a week just to break even. In America, unfortunately, we’ve perfected the debt trap and turned poverty into a profit center. The same equity companies own rental properties, extended stay hotels, and storage locations so they can vertically integrate homelessness.
      - fragmede 2mo ago
        The most evil thing I heard was companies like Doordash and Uber buying up data on who has credit card debt, so they know which driver is more desperate for cash, so they can low-ball them and give them a worse offer because they're more likely to take it because they're desperate for it.
        weird-eye-issue 2mo ago
        Wow that's terrible but also pretty smart...
        frenchtoast8 2mo ago
        Where is the proof of any of this? There are too many conspiracy theories about gig work. There was a similar post on HN a few months back[1] based on some anonymous vagueposter on Reddit, again without evidence. Would I be surprised if this is true? Of course not. Should we just start believing random things without any critical thinking? No. ^1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46461563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46461563
        fragmede 2mo ago
        https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
    - heylook 2mo ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
    - DonsDiscountGas 2mo ago
      Carpooling?
elictronic 2mo ago
Tesla has fewer miles than I have driven in my lifetime. It’s currently still a half baked product. This might be a story in a few years but today you’re comparing an F150 to a Delorean.
- fragmede 2mo ago
  How many miles is that?
JLO64 2mo ago
This is somewhat similar to the situation here in LA where they service and very often drive through Westlake/MacArthur-Park which undoubtedly low income. I think it’s for practical reasons though, as they’re not allowed to use the freeways here yet. So for people going from rich areas (Bel-Air/Beverly Hills) to DTLA they need to cross/drive through there anyways. Even so, I’ve encountered plenty of people who live in those areas and have been able to take Waymos which is great given how sketchy that area can be…
- fragmede 2mo ago
  Ish. The problem with Waymos is there's no human driver, so they'll adjust pick up and drop off in a way that could be dangerous for the passenger. A human driver isn't going let a passenger off into a dangerous situation. They'll block traffic to drop the passenger off at their destination instead of a few blocks away in a dangerous neighborhood. Waymo's got the legal go ahead to use freeways, but they're working on some of the subtleties of self-driving on the freeway vs city streets before enabling it for everybody. (Specifically, California car culture is you merge left early instead of staying in the right lane until you have to. Apparently the Waymo driver was staying in the right lane.)
  - holycrapwhodat 2mo ago
    > The problem with Waymos is there's no human driver, so they'll adjust pick up and drop off in a way that could be dangerous for the passenger. A human driver isn't going let a passenger off into a dangerous situation. In this situation, you absolutely can (and are encouraged to) press the support button in the car to talk to a human agent. They have the ability to tell the car to go somewhere it normally wouldn't go for any situation that humans can reason about.