Alphabet’s Waymo cuts more than 100 jobs in second round of layoffs | Hacker News Reader

Alphabet’s Waymo cuts more than 100 jobs in second round of layoffs

financialpost.com

37 pointsvoytec7 comments

I’ve been asking this for a few years now - how is Waymo ever going to be profitable, let alone worth billions? It seems like their opportunities to license the tech to actual car companies are pretty limited, as most of them seem to have competing efforts (and it’s not like any of them are so wildly profitable that Waymo could somehow capture much of their value). As an actual taxi service, it’s both hugely capital and labor intensive (even if you don’t need drivers you need all kinds of maintenance workers and cleaners), low margin, and you’re competing with Uber, Lyft, regular taxis, the bus system, etc. If they’re using custom, low-volume cars they need to have super high utilization rates to be profitable, which means you can’t have lots of idle cars to accommodate surges and things. Meanwhile they’re burning through billions of dollars and are like 15 years in with no profits in sight.

> It seems like their opportunities to license the tech to actual car companies are pretty limited, as most of them seem to have competing efforts (and it’s not like any of them are so wildly profitable that Waymo could somehow capture much of their value).

I think you contradict yourself a bit -- they are not that profitable, but will be able to sink many-many billions into their own efforts playing catch up if Waymo solves the problem first? Doubtful. The clever ones will license and the stubborn ones will go under.

> you’re competing with Uber, Lyft, regular taxis

Eliminating the largest expense of these services (drivers) seems like a pretty big advantage, might be even insurmountable. Maintenance/cleaners are not big line items btw.

> If they’re using custom, low-volume cars

What do you mean by custom cars? The difference with standard cars apart from sensors is pretty small.

Don't get me wrong, I'm also skeptical about Waymo. The problem might very well be not solvable satisfactory with current technologies. But if they can do it, they will be worth >100B easily (Uber is not far from that mark!).

This sounds like scaling the service to more areas will slow :( . Surprising that Alphabet sees the savings to be worth a slower rollout.

Well... It's not like it can get any slower, can it? Waymo is the industry lead and yet it offers rides to only a small closed group of beta testers. They only deploy it in geofenced areas. It seems that they deploy the driverless variant, but every Waymo I ever see has a driver behind the wheel, driving it manually, night time or daytime. This rollout is glacial.

It's been 16 years since the DARPA Urban Challenge. I'm happy to be wrong, but I really don't think robotaxis will penetrate the market to mass adoption like many predict, and if it does, it will be in 50 years or more. In 20 years robotaxis will still be a problem of legislation and struggling with adoption, not a technological problem. American car culture is too ingrained.

At most, driverless robotaxis will be symbols of tech companies along the coastlines. They won't transform transportation for the working class because in 20 years, 95% of drivers will still want to drive themselves.

You say "along the coastlines" like that's supposed to represent a tiny sliver of the population. In fact, depending on how exactly you define coastline (does the gulf of Mexico count?), probably the majority of the population lives "along the coastline".

As for the definitely landlocked populations, they have already been enjoying the benefits of self driving vehicles for many years in the form of autosteer on their tractors.

"yet it offers rides to only a small closed group of beta testers."

Not true, anyone in PHX can use the Waymo App and hail a robotaxi.

> At most, driverless robotaxis will be symbols of tech companies along the coastlines.

40% of the US population lives in coastal counties, so... Okay.

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