Localization means that you cannot generally (with current-state tech) ship a bunch of cars to a new city and turn them loose. You have to do a large amount of detailed mapping, characterization, and training in every area you want to launch. That's why you see all the self-driving companies slowly expanding availability areas after their test cars have been running around for many thousands of miles in the area.
Operations is all the stuff that's not the car driving itself around. The cars need a home base where they can park when not in use, recharge, get cleaned, have sensors checked and calibrated, and get maintenance when needed (scales linearly with number of vehicles). The cars are also not 100% flawlessly handling every situation and rider issue - there still needs to be human support in the loop, both in terms of a dedicated remote support team (scales linearly with number of rides) and in terms of local rescue people to get cars when they're really stuck (scales linearly with number of vehicles).
Cost is the cost of vehicles, tech (ADKs), and operations. Waymo and Cruise are currently operating at absolutely massive loss and will continue to do so for years. It's generally not a great idea to open the faucet on a money-losing business until you at least have a solid way to get to profitability. Yes, I know, Uber and other giant startups basically never made money, etc. etc. but the market has changed and owners are looking to decrease costs of tech and operations before really scaling up. It's going to take a couple years still.
I would only caution that people shouldn't overindex on mapping costs. When you're talking about entering a major metro area, you need lots of vehicles and depots and so on anyway just to provide the eventual service. So the upfront initial map build out is certainly a component of starting in a new geography, but I think people assume it is somehow dominant. It's not.
The current approach then for ride hailing, which requires depots, means that:
> just turn on the tap, buy a million cars and cover the whole country
is not happening anytime soon.
- Is the initial mapping effort very high and expensive? How long does it take, on an average, to fully map a city the size and complexity of San Francisco?
- How much of the mapping process is automated?
- How are the maps kept up-to-date? We know from Waymo's blog post a while ago [1] that the cars map continuously. But is human intervention required to verify an update (like a new construction zone that was encountered)?
- How much of the country have you already mapped? Waymo says they are testing in 25 cities, so I'm assuming the number is at least 25 cities.
- What does a vehicle do if it detects a mismatch of road conditions vs the onboard map? (I already know the answer, but this is one of the most frequent points of misinformation where people say it stops working)
Anything you can share without revealing your secret sauce is appreciated!
[1] https://blog.waymo.com/2020/09/the-waymo-driver-handbook-map...
When you take a hard look at exactly how to get the costs down to the point where that price is profitable, that must be a monumental challenge. The cars must cost maybe $100-150k more? Maintenance on the sensitive custom-fit equipment, software and operations costs, yikes.