I think the title is missing a word:
“Alphabet _has to_ invest another $5B into Waymo”.
I’d like to remind everyone that it’s still a taxi business with taxi margins (best case).
“Alphabet _has to_ invest another $5B into Waymo”.
I’d like to remind everyone that it’s still a taxi business with taxi margins (best case).
But there's still not too much margin when the driver needs some comp.
Waymo, on the flip side, has a lot of capital equipment added to cars to depreciate, but it's gotten way cheaper and stands to get much cheaper still.
Waymo has clearly been playing the “but it’ll be cheaper” game for a long, long time now. It makes sense if you squint really hard and fudge some numbers about unit economics.
If the expected outcome is for it to be eventually cheaper, then why when I open the app does it costs almost twice as much as an Uber or Lyft? You’d think they would want to at least convince investors and train customers that the savings are real and they’re going to prove it by passing it on.
For me, costs have been comparable to Lyft.