4 ms·

Aren’t Waymo prices above Uber’s? That’s what I’ve seen in SF. That is to say that I don’t think the economics work. You’re better off offering free Ubers. And

Aren’t Waymo prices above Uber’s? That’s what I’ve seen in SF. That is to say that I don’t think the economics work. You’re better off offering free Ubers. And I doubt that will solve many issues.

jdm2212 2mo ago
Waymo charges more than Uber to supply constraints, not bad unit economics. People (like me) are willing to pay extra for the product Waymo offers, and Waymo is itself supply constrained and has no direct competitors offering driverless rides, so they get to do a bit of monopoly pricing.
- LightBug1 2mo ago
  What's the product vs an Uber? Genuine question.
  - catchnear4321 2mo ago
    No human in the car?
    - mathisfun123 2mo ago
      This is only a product for anti-social nerds. Most people will not pay a premium for this (this isn't waymo's product). Edit: lots of people commenting on here how they're normie and they would still prefer waymo. Read what I wrote again - I didn't say normies wouldn't prefer, I said normies wouldn't pay a premium. So unless waymo is planning on being a luxury car service (which it's not) that can't possibly be their intended product/market.
      - free652 2mo ago
        huh, definitely will pay more for not having a driver to be constantly on the phone.
      - ChadNauseam 2mo ago
        They absolutely will. I'm a very social person but when I'm going home from a date with my girlfriend I always want a Waymo just because I don't want a 3rd person involved. And sometimes I'm having a bad day and don't want to have to make small talk. And it's nice that I can talk on the phone without disturbing someone.
      - vlovich123 2mo ago
        Safety is normally ok in an uber but in a Waymo it’s much higher. Whether I’m talking about driving safety or personal safety from the/for the driver, you pick. But generally you can charge more for a safer product.
      - catchnear4321 2mo ago
        yes yes you are the product.
      - hadlock 2mo ago
        This comes up in conversation at office events, every woman in our office always agrees they will choose waymo over uber every time, due to the lack of (presumably male) driver.
      - nunez 2mo ago
        My extremely social not-tech nerd wife that hardly uses FSD in her car got HOOKED on Waymo after the first ride. Same with my parents.
  - cflewis 2mo ago
    Drives better, isn't distracted, doesn't get lost, care are always clean, will always take you where you want to go day or night, and yeah, no human.
    - scoofy 2mo ago
      Yea, it not that most uber/lyft drivers are bad (most are good), it’s just that all Waymos provide a good experience. It’s the same reason many people will prefer a chain restaurant to an unknown mom & pop. By knowing what you’re getting, you’re willing to give up the potential for something nominally better to avoid something much worse.
    - throwaway2037 2mo ago
      > car[s] are always clean This is a real surprise to me. I don't write that to doubt you. How do you think it works in practice? My point: If you have a human in the car, they can keep a closer eye on the car between rides and keep it clean. Without a driver, you lose that. How does Waymo know when a car needs to be cleaned?
      - jdm2212 2mo ago
        Waymo regularly brings the cars in to central service depots for cleaning and battery charging. Also, as a passenger you can report that a car is dirty and it will be pulled out of service for immediate cleaning (and you get a small credit towards your next ride).
        Breza 2mo ago
        Waymo has done a great job of making its rollouts into new cities smooth. I have to wonder what will happen once they pivot to profitability in a few years. Will they be willing to lose revenue pulling so many cars out of service? Will they optimize the human costs by not having so many humans on staff? Maybe they'll kill Uber first and then drop the quality.
    - acm9680 2mo ago
      "Doesn't get lost" is generous. they always cause so much caos in SF
  - hadlock 2mo ago
    I don't have to listen to the driver argue with his girlfriend across the entire span of the bay bridge, I don't have to worry the uber reeks of week (or worse, cigarette) smell on the way to an interview etc etc. Given the choice I will choose driverless every time.
    - throwaway2037 2mo ago
      Do you report these complaints using the Uber app? To be clear: I have no experience riding with Uber.
  - throwaway2037 2mo ago
    I have written about this before in similar discussions. I think men just cannot comprehend how much women are willing to pay to guarantee that they can avoid a scary situation in a car with a stranger driver. Ask any woman: Have you ever had a scary experince in a car with a stranger driver? Probably 100% will say yes. I would say Waymo's primary customer will be middle to high income women in urban environments.
    - jdm2212 2mo ago
      Also middle/high income parents. Shuttling kids to and from school and activities is the real killer use case for driverless cars. They're actively working on getting this legalized.
- throwaway2037 2mo ago
  > Waymo charges more than Uber to supply constraints To understand this better, is Waymo limited in each location by the number of cars they are allowed to drive? Or, is Waymo too slow to expand the number of cars on their side? As an outsider, if you have very good demand for your product, why not expand? I must be missing something obvious. (Again, I don't write this to doubt your explanation.)
  - alooPotato 2mo ago
    There is a limit on how many they are allowed to operate.
    - throwaway2037 2mo ago
      I tried to research this limit. Here is what I found about San Francisco: > Waymo is not subject to a regulatory cap or hard limit on the number of cars it can operate in San Francisco. To be clear, the regulator in question here is California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which is a state-level regulator. Apparently, SF local officials would like to limit the number of vehicles but it not allowed by division of powers.
  - jdm2212 2mo ago
    AIUI the issue is just scaling pain. No one has ever run a global network of first-party-owned taxis before, and they're learning by doing, at the same time as they're also solving problems in ML/robotics to make the robotaxis work more reliably in more contexts, and also figuring out how to manufacture reliable robotaxis at scale.
pfooti 2mo ago
Waymo is more until you factor in the tip for Uber. Ive also found that waymo is a lot more correct in estimating time to pickup in SF. Because Uber/lyft drivers can turn you down (presumably) I find that "your Uber can be here in 4 minutes" when I open the app turns into "but it will actually be 20"
- satvikpendem 2mo ago
  Who tips on Uber? One price up front and paid, that is the deal. Anyone tipping on something like that is their own fault.
  - pfooti 2mo ago
    I dunno. Hard to say "I tip my Uber driver because I understand how little the drivers get paid" if I'm also moving to waymo instead. Hard to find ethical consumption under capitalism. But since you asked in kind of a flippant way: who tips on Uber? People who aren't sociopaths, I'd say.
    - SepiaSapient 2mo ago
      >who tips on Uber? People who aren't sociopaths, I'd say. Non-americans don't. To me, being socially expected to tip for a Taxi feels like a parody from a sketch comedy. ditto for tipping barbers or expecting tips over 10%. The only time I've tipped a Uber was when me and my friends were at risk of losing a train. The driver (unprompted) went pedal to the metal to make it on time, so afterwards I gave him a couple of bucks. Tip culture is bad for rideshare drivers in aggregate anyways. The apps carefully manage the pay of drivers on each market so necessary supply is guaranteed at minimal cost. If a expectation of tipping exists, the platforms simply pay less. Now drivers also have maximize for tips instead of just driving the goddamn car.
      - pfooti 2mo ago
        Fair enough- outside of the US, workers may get paid fairly. In the US, many service workers are in a system where the employer has externalized the cost to pay those employees to the customers. The system is awful, but I'm also not going to not tip if I can afford it. FWIW, the real problem isn't tip culture, it is the power imbalance between labor and the company that is using that labor (without employing drivers), but I dunno how much of an audience that kind of argument has on this particular site.

jdm2212 2mo ago

Waymo charges more than Uber to supply constraints, not bad unit economics. People (like me) are willing to pay extra for the product Waymo offers, and Waymo is itself supply constrained and has no direct competitors offering driverless rides, so they get to do a bit of monopoly pricing.

LightBug1 2mo ago
What's the product vs an Uber? Genuine question.
- catchnear4321 2mo ago
  No human in the car?
  - mathisfun123 2mo ago
    This is only a product for anti-social nerds. Most people will not pay a premium for this (this isn't waymo's product). Edit: lots of people commenting on here how they're normie and they would still prefer waymo. Read what I wrote again - I didn't say normies wouldn't prefer, I said normies wouldn't pay a premium. So unless waymo is planning on being a luxury car service (which it's not) that can't possibly be their intended product/market.
    - free652 2mo ago
      huh, definitely will pay more for not having a driver to be constantly on the phone.
    - ChadNauseam 2mo ago
      They absolutely will. I'm a very social person but when I'm going home from a date with my girlfriend I always want a Waymo just because I don't want a 3rd person involved. And sometimes I'm having a bad day and don't want to have to make small talk. And it's nice that I can talk on the phone without disturbing someone.
    - vlovich123 2mo ago
      Safety is normally ok in an uber but in a Waymo it’s much higher. Whether I’m talking about driving safety or personal safety from the/for the driver, you pick. But generally you can charge more for a safer product.
    - catchnear4321 2mo ago
      yes yes you are the product.
    - hadlock 2mo ago
      This comes up in conversation at office events, every woman in our office always agrees they will choose waymo over uber every time, due to the lack of (presumably male) driver.
    - nunez 2mo ago
      My extremely social not-tech nerd wife that hardly uses FSD in her car got HOOKED on Waymo after the first ride. Same with my parents.
- cflewis 2mo ago
  Drives better, isn't distracted, doesn't get lost, care are always clean, will always take you where you want to go day or night, and yeah, no human.
  - scoofy 2mo ago
    Yea, it not that most uber/lyft drivers are bad (most are good), it’s just that all Waymos provide a good experience. It’s the same reason many people will prefer a chain restaurant to an unknown mom & pop. By knowing what you’re getting, you’re willing to give up the potential for something nominally better to avoid something much worse.
  - throwaway2037 2mo ago
    > car[s] are always clean This is a real surprise to me. I don't write that to doubt you. How do you think it works in practice? My point: If you have a human in the car, they can keep a closer eye on the car between rides and keep it clean. Without a driver, you lose that. How does Waymo know when a car needs to be cleaned?
    - jdm2212 2mo ago
      Waymo regularly brings the cars in to central service depots for cleaning and battery charging. Also, as a passenger you can report that a car is dirty and it will be pulled out of service for immediate cleaning (and you get a small credit towards your next ride).
      - Breza 2mo ago
        Waymo has done a great job of making its rollouts into new cities smooth. I have to wonder what will happen once they pivot to profitability in a few years. Will they be willing to lose revenue pulling so many cars out of service? Will they optimize the human costs by not having so many humans on staff? Maybe they'll kill Uber first and then drop the quality.
  - acm9680 2mo ago
    "Doesn't get lost" is generous. they always cause so much caos in SF
- hadlock 2mo ago
  I don't have to listen to the driver argue with his girlfriend across the entire span of the bay bridge, I don't have to worry the uber reeks of week (or worse, cigarette) smell on the way to an interview etc etc. Given the choice I will choose driverless every time.
  - throwaway2037 2mo ago
    Do you report these complaints using the Uber app? To be clear: I have no experience riding with Uber.
- throwaway2037 2mo ago
  I have written about this before in similar discussions. I think men just cannot comprehend how much women are willing to pay to guarantee that they can avoid a scary situation in a car with a stranger driver. Ask any woman: Have you ever had a scary experince in a car with a stranger driver? Probably 100% will say yes. I would say Waymo's primary customer will be middle to high income women in urban environments.
  - jdm2212 2mo ago
    Also middle/high income parents. Shuttling kids to and from school and activities is the real killer use case for driverless cars. They're actively working on getting this legalized.
throwaway2037 2mo ago
> Waymo charges more than Uber to supply constraints To understand this better, is Waymo limited in each location by the number of cars they are allowed to drive? Or, is Waymo too slow to expand the number of cars on their side? As an outsider, if you have very good demand for your product, why not expand? I must be missing something obvious. (Again, I don't write this to doubt your explanation.)
- alooPotato 2mo ago
  There is a limit on how many they are allowed to operate.
  - throwaway2037 2mo ago
    I tried to research this limit. Here is what I found about San Francisco: > Waymo is not subject to a regulatory cap or hard limit on the number of cars it can operate in San Francisco. To be clear, the regulator in question here is California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which is a state-level regulator. Apparently, SF local officials would like to limit the number of vehicles but it not allowed by division of powers.
- jdm2212 2mo ago
  AIUI the issue is just scaling pain. No one has ever run a global network of first-party-owned taxis before, and they're learning by doing, at the same time as they're also solving problems in ML/robotics to make the robotaxis work more reliably in more contexts, and also figuring out how to manufacture reliable robotaxis at scale.

pfooti 2mo ago

Waymo is more until you factor in the tip for Uber. Ive also found that waymo is a lot more correct in estimating time to pickup in SF. Because Uber/lyft drivers can turn you down (presumably) I find that "your Uber can be here in 4 minutes" when I open the app turns into "but it will actually be 20"

satvikpendem 2mo ago
Who tips on Uber? One price up front and paid, that is the deal. Anyone tipping on something like that is their own fault.
- pfooti 2mo ago
  I dunno. Hard to say "I tip my Uber driver because I understand how little the drivers get paid" if I'm also moving to waymo instead. Hard to find ethical consumption under capitalism. But since you asked in kind of a flippant way: who tips on Uber? People who aren't sociopaths, I'd say.
  - SepiaSapient 2mo ago
    >who tips on Uber? People who aren't sociopaths, I'd say. Non-americans don't. To me, being socially expected to tip for a Taxi feels like a parody from a sketch comedy. ditto for tipping barbers or expecting tips over 10%. The only time I've tipped a Uber was when me and my friends were at risk of losing a train. The driver (unprompted) went pedal to the metal to make it on time, so afterwards I gave him a couple of bucks. Tip culture is bad for rideshare drivers in aggregate anyways. The apps carefully manage the pay of drivers on each market so necessary supply is guaranteed at minimal cost. If a expectation of tipping exists, the platforms simply pay less. Now drivers also have maximize for tips instead of just driving the goddamn car.
    - pfooti 2mo ago
      Fair enough- outside of the US, workers may get paid fairly. In the US, many service workers are in a system where the employer has externalized the cost to pay those employees to the customers. The system is awful, but I'm also not going to not tip if I can afford it. FWIW, the real problem isn't tip culture, it is the power imbalance between labor and the company that is using that labor (without employing drivers), but I dunno how much of an audience that kind of argument has on this particular site.