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I live very close to LAX, and we have hundreds of Waymos in our area. At first i was a little weary, and kinda weirded out by all of them. They have become com
by cortesoft 2mo ago
I live very close to LAX, and we have hundreds of Waymos in our area. At first i was a little weary, and kinda weirded out by all of them.
They have become completely normal, and cause WAY fewer traffic incidents than human drivers. They are very predictable, and will always let you pull in front of them when changing lanes (unlike a lot of other LA drivers).
I have seen a few incidents where they seem 'stuck', and it was a bit annoying and kind of funny, but again, it does not happen nearly as often as for human drivers.
I also like taking them. It is nice to just get in and relax and not have to talk to anyone or worry about who is going to pick you up. You can control the temperature and music from your phone, you can drop the pin exactly where you want to be dropped off and picked up, and the ride is smooth and comfortable.
We can debate all the knock on effects of Waymos, but the user experience is pretty great.
- YKutsev 2mo agoBeen in a Waymo in SF — impressive tech. But I keep wondering: does the math actually work? Car + all the sensors + maintenance + mapping. Can a single vehicle ever turn a profit?
- twosdai 2mo agoI thought about this as well. The dsytopian world I think will exist in the future where the Waymo is priced higher and people will want to take it more, over a cheaper Uber. Precisely because the human driver is removed from the equation. So yes, I think they will be able to turn a profit by charging more for the experience. Which is a humanless car.
- jerlam 2mo agoAt least in my area, Waymos are always more expensive than Ubers.
- fragmede 2mo agoSo, uh, you don't really tip your Uber drivers much then do you? Right now, Tuesday 3pm, Waymo will cost me 13.76 cross town. UberX 10.95, Lyft 11.95. If I don't tip Lyft/Uber they'll be cheaper but I definitely don't tip the Waymo.
- jerlam 2mo agoThe pricing was 30% more the last few times I used them.
- cortesoft 2mo agoJust checked where I am (which, admittedly, is late at night), but for a random ride to a restaurant 2 miles away, Waymo was $9.34 and Uber was $8.91. This does match my earlier observations, where the prices were pretty damn close.
- otterley 2mo agoThese companies are taking a very long view (and are funded accordingly). The future vision is one in which cars with drivers just aren't a thing in cities anymore. Nobody owns a car to use in day-to-day intra-city journeys; instead, you just take a drive in an autonomous vehicle on demand.
- Philpax 2mo agoAre you running your replies through a LLM, or is the LLM producing them entirely?
- overfeed 2mo ago> Can a single vehicle ever turn a profit? That depends on how low they can get the costs. Waymo took delivery of the last Jaguar i-Pace, and are scaling up production of the Zeekr-based EVs, which I assume are significantly cheaper. I think the math works, using car rental companies as an anchor point: they are (mostly) profitable*; they have relatively lower Cost of Revenue, but Waymo will have much fatter margins. * There was a blip when Hertz had to write-down its bold bet on EVs didn't quite work out.
- fragmede 2mo agoBack of the envelope, three car costs $200k, charge $20/ride, say that ride costs $5 to operate, $200k/$15 gets you 14,000 rides (rounded). Say 10 rides a day... shy of 4 years to break even. Substitute in whatever numbers you think are reasonable.
- dmitriy_ko 2mo agoUber rides are around $1.5 per mile on average. Assume Waymo car drives 200K miles over it's lifetime, 3mi/kWh EV efficiently and $0.20/kWh electricity cost. It will generate $300K over it's lifetime and use $13K worth of electricity. Right now it costs $150K to manufacture Waymo car because they are custom built and Lidars are still expensive. Even at $150K unit economics should be OK. But the cost of self driving cars will go down as they are manufactured at larger scale and will eventually approach cost of regular mid-range car. In a few years they will be under $50K per car. Mapping is a one-time cost and the need for mapping will eventually disappear. This will be a massively profitable business for self-driving fleet operators.
- xnx 2mo agoGood calculation approach. Waymos will drive a lot more than 200K miles in their lifetime. Taxis often do a million miles. There are already photos out there of Waymo odometers over 100K.
- epolanski 2mo agoIt's very interesting, because on one side we have clear data showing that autonomous cars at the Waymo level are safer than humans. On the other hand we don't give technology the same pass we give to humans, meaning that we don't tolerate machine incidents the same way we tolerate human ones. Which means that self-driving cars need to be a magnitude of order safer than humans. And even though a self-driving car will never road rage or use the car as a weapon on christmas markets, we'll still tolerate humans driving more than one odd 1-in-a-billion ai-error caused incident.
- sudokatsu 2mo agoWe don’t tolerate machine incidents because who is liable if an accident occurs? A company with a $4.6 trillion market cap? They’re not a legal opponent any of us really want to take on.
- xnx 2mo agoLawyers are salivating at the possibility of suing Waymo if they ever make a mistake. Much better to be hit by a Waymo (or a Tesla Robotaxi) than the typical uninsured, "judgement proof", human driver.
- sudokatsu 2mo agoAny stats to back up that the _typical_ driver is uninsured?
- xnx 2mo agoAn exaggeration on my part. About 16% of all drivers are uninsured (https://insurance-research.org/node/130 https://insurance-research.org/node/130), but "accident probability of uninsured drivers is 34 percentage points higher" (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19439962.2018.1477892 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19439962.2018.1...).
- sgustard 2mo ago
- WarmWash 2mo ago>and cause WAY fewer traffic incidents than human drivers. Ironically the best way to verify this is that when they do cause traffic issues, it becomes national news. Imagine breaking down and blocking an intersection in Edgewood Georgia, and then getting a call that night from your Uncle in Oregon saying he saw your breakdown on the news...
- alex1138 2mo agoThere was a story here about it hitting a child (I think) but it was determined to be much less serious than if a human driver was involved
- heaney-555 2mo agohttps://medium.com/the-generator/a-waymo-vehicle-hit-a-kid-but-thats-not-the-full-story-8ea4c189c2e9 https://medium.com/the-generator/a-waymo-vehicle-hit-a-kid-b... "As the Waymo approached the double-parked SUV, a child ran out from behind the SUV and into the roadway, directly in front of the Waymo." Waymo cannae change the laws of physics. Braking distances exist for AI-driven vehicles just as much as human-driven ones.
- waterhouse 2mo agoAnd if anything, I'd expect machines to have faster reflexes than humans. The Medium article is walled off, but I found another source[1]: "The child reported minor injuries and did not require transportation to a hospital. ... Waymo said at the time that the child ran into the street from behind a double-parked SUV and that the vehicle braked hard before contact, reducing speed significantly before impact." Edit: Waymo's blog[2] says it "reduc[ed] speed from approximately 17 mph to under 6 mph before contact was made", and that "our peer-reviewed model[3] shows that a fully attentive human driver in this same situation would have made contact with the pedestrian at approximately 14 mph". [1] https://ktla.com/news/local-news/new-details-released-in-waymo-vehicle-crash-with-9-year-old-near-santa-monica-school/ https://ktla.com/news/local-news/new-details-released-in-way... [2] https://waymo.com/blog/2026/01/a-commitment-to-transparency-and-road-safety/ https://waymo.com/blog/2026/01/a-commitment-to-transparency-... [3] https://waymo.com/blog/2022/09/benchmarking-av-safety/ https://waymo.com/blog/2022/09/benchmarking-av-safety/
- lokar 2mo agoI took one to a show at the Hollywood Bowl. Chaotic traffic environment: lots of cars, cones, people directing traffic, pedestrians everywhere. It did great.
- austinl 2mo agoIn SF, there's a crosswalk on a street near me where cars regularly go 35 mph, so they rarely stop for pedestrians. A few days ago, I was waiting on the sidewalk to cross, and a Waymo stopped. I was so surprised, at first I thought it was letting someone out. It took a few seconds to realize that no, it was stopping for me to cross the street.
- runarberg 2mo agoWhenever I visit San Francisco I get the sense that these robo-taxis are nothing but public transit for those who are willing and able to spend extra money. I would not compare the user experience to drivers, or the safety record to private cars. I would compare the user experience and the safety record to human driven taxis, buses, light rail, and metro. I am curious if the rider experience is actually any better then taking the M train from the Castro to SF state or the 49 bus between the Mission and Geary. The latter is certainly cheaper, and orders of magnitude more efficient.
- SR2Z 2mo agoIf the train goes exactly where you want to go, I would always say take the train. It's spacious and clean. But if where you're going is only served by bus or requires some walking... it really depends on how you feel. Waymo is pretty expensive, but I have had some truly miserable bus rides in SF.
- runarberg 2mo agoThere is a reason I picked the 49 as my example. When I lived there 15 years ago, the busses were lacking to say the least. Extremely slow, got stuck in traffic, crowded, etc. Since the BRT lane on Van Ness, taking the 49 is more like taking a more shaky Muni train honestly. Frequent enough that it doesn’t get crowded, and it doesn’t get stuck in traffic, meaning much faster ride. As San Francisco builds more of these bus lanes, the case for the robo-taxis is only going to get weaker.
- sebzim4500 2mo ago>You can control the temperature and music from your phone That's really cool but makes sense. Can't wait for them to be available in London. I'd use them instead of Uber even if they cost much more.
- vjvjvjvjghv 2mo agoI used one last time I was in Silicon Valley and I was super impressed with its driving. Very confident and felt super safe. I can’t wait for broader adoption of self driving cars.
- panick21_ 2mo agoIf you live in car sewer then slightly better shit is considered acceptable. I prefer not to live like that.
- coldpie 2mo agoAs a public transit using American who does not live in NYC, I do live in a car sewer, so I will happily accept this significantly better shit while still also advocating for increased density, traffic calming measures, and better public transit. I'd much rather see a Waymo coming down the street while I'm crossing to catch the bus than a human driver.