Surely, though, the cost of operation has little to do with the cost of rides? Google has poured billions into the project. A few dollars per ride isn't helping their accountants sleep any better.

Much cheaper, maybe half that. Krafcik says approximately the price of a Mercedes S class ($110k) https://www.forbes.com/sites/johanmoreno/2021/01/22/waymo-ce...

Hardware costs are dropping pretty fast. Lidar is already an order of magnitude cheaper and compute benefits from Moore's Law.