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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure what the story is here. I'm as skeptical of Waymo as anyone but a lot of people basically don't take Uber/Lyft/taxis on anything like a regular basis.

I realize a fair number of readers here probably live in cities and maybe don't have cars. But, in my case, I live outside a major city and, while in normal times, I do take reserved cars back and forth to the airport, I haven't taken a taxi/Uber/Lyft around where I live for many years. I do take them maybe a dozen times a year but that's when I'm traveling.

So the fact that there's relatively little use of Waymo in the Phoenix suburban sprawl where it operates doesn't seem especially noteworthy.

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You don't think $3.5 Billion spent on a project with little customers is noteworthy?

It's still an R&D effort- once they've spent that much on manufacturing and marketing, if they still have few customers then thats something else

Once it works properly, you won't need to spend anything at all on marketing... people will flock to it in droves.

Trucking will be up-ended. Freight will change. People will in a short period of time stop owning cars and call them as needed.

I'm just not sure we'll ever get there.

I'm pretty sure we'll see this on certain highways in certain weather conditions--which would actually be a killer feature for a lot of us. But it doesn't fundamentally change car ownership and use--and may or may not change trucking.

Yeah, the actual driving part is just part of the job. You would need personnel at every stop along the route to handle refueling or changing trailers. As well security concerns to an unmanned vehicle laden with goods. I mean an automated cruise control would allow night driving and such some savings there.

Eh, imagine two drivers for eight trucks... Takes care of the security problem, so long as the US doesn't devolve into road banditry, and the humans can handle refueling, and the trucks can drive without the usual restrictions on human fatigue.

Not owning a car seems hard for anyone with a life more complicated than single office drone. I often need to stash kids equipment in the car for later pickup; we keep medicine and books in the car used often, strollers, umbrellas, not to mention car seats. That’s a lot of stuff to lug between Uber to Uber. People who play sports after work, sales folks traveling with merchandise, etc. cars are a home away from home in our lifestyles.

IMO Society will adapt and people will find different solutions for these things. Take for instance two scenarios:

* London - I used to live there and commute on the tube. Not everyone uses a car on a regular basis, except maybe to go to the supermarket. I didn't find it particularly hard to bring my sportswear in a bag and put a kindle in my jacket pocket. I assume New York is the same!

* Amsterdam and The Hague - I used to travel to these cities often, and these societies exist almost entirely on bike.

I have a car, but also manage to walk into work and not bring everything with me everywhere. It just seems like the assumption is "it will only work if it can support me doing exactly what I do now", but this sort of technology has the potential to completely change the way people work and live.

Also cars equipped with boat racks, bike racks—often fairly specialized for specific equipment. Loading up cars the night before for a trip. Could definitely make a difference at the margins in cities but you already have Uber.

This might cut price in half? A lot of people seem to assume that this makes taxi rides almost too cheap to meter relative to owning a car or taking an Uber. And I'm pretty sure that's not true. You don't pay yourself to drive and the US IRS deduction for mileage is something like 50 cents per mile. That's probably a pretty good floor for a robo-taxi including the mileage it takes to get to you.

Waymo might end up replacing the second car, or get someone to travel the last miles to public transportation for the daily commute.

The combination of ride-share, Zipcar, and traditional rentals (plus scattered improvements in public transit and bike infrastructure in some places) has already done that to some degree. It's not about the person who needs to get in a car every time they go somewhere from their house. It's about replacing the car that maybe gets driven once or twice a week.

Lots of middle class folks from across the world have families and don't have cars. There are ways of life other than living in a SFH on a quarter acre an hour commute from work.

It is quite possible and even more convenient to live in a place with walkable areas and good public transit.

TBH I think there are all solutions to that when you have a big enough fleet. Rent a cargo van, rent a car for the day for storage, more storage options at places, rent a car with car seats for several years and sport equipment racks. When family is over, automatically scale with 3 or 4 cars, etc.

You could make specialized cars that would be way more convenient than the typical suv, but no person would keep as their permanent car configuration. I could see vans with roll in bike racks for example, which is more convenient than latching it on top of the typical suv sports rack for example. Groceries and other retail shopping I could see you just drop in the little cart drone and it gets to your house before you do, already in the pantry, etc. Grocery drones will be well insulated coolers, which is better than your typical suburban shopping trip freshness wise. No more melted ice cream anxiety when you remember something.

All these problems apply to anyone without a car anywhere. People in major cities with good transit systems figure it out, I don't see how this is any different. In fact, it's certainly preferable to a train/bike in terms of space to transport things.

"Once it works properly, you won't need to spend anything at all on marketing... people will flock to it in droves."

I agree.

However this really remains to be seen. If Waymo got everything working as right as they could it might still fail. This is a culture shift you're talking about, and even when past tech has required less to shift some has failed.

Trucking and highway driving are so much easier. And will probably be solved far sooner by other people, and Waymo will have missed an obvious stepping stone, business scaler, revenue stream.

Personally I'm not convinced that Waymo isn't continuing to flush a whole lot of money down the toilet. But this is a test/prototype in an area where I assume most households own cars and rarely take taxis and ride shares around the local area. So the fact that not a lot of people are taking a Waymo except maybe for the novelty is utterly unsurprising.

But their Arizona test is just that, a test. They are (or at least they state that they're) polishing the experience of using the service. What better place to do that than in a place where demand isn't going to be especially high, with ideal weather and lots of well-kept roads? Surely nobody thinks the Arizona service is Waymo's best stab at a productionalized offering.

They opened up a pork shop in a muslim area and we're not supposed to question that? These are the people supposed to make cars autonomous and they are utterly ignorant to all these things? Is it designed to fail or are they stuck in the suburban sprawl because that's the only place where the thing will not practically fail and kill someone?

It might be safe to assume that Waymo management has given more than a passing thought to their test location.

Waymo's test location was driven by Arizona's friendly legal environment.

these suburban sprawl places were also very gung ho about rolling out the regulatory equivalent of a red carpet. I'm not aware of any major city that has nearly as permissive autonomous regulations in their central area, probably because of concerns about reliability.

then the question becomes chicken and egg.

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