Waymo has completed 2M paid rider-only trips | Hacker News Reader

Waymo has completed 2M paid rider-only trips

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38 pointsra714 comments

The 1m rides mark was announced May 10th and 50k trips per week was announced May 16th. So they must be getting close to 100k rides per week if my math is right.

You're absolutely right, 90,900/week. Astonishing. ~2x in 3 months? [1]

Are we seeing the hockey stick?

They've been consistently candid, and indicated the next vehicle is the one they'll scale on, custom taxi by Chinese automaker Zeekr. I figured it'd be another couple years, maybe build out LA, scale SF to highways, and then maybe Zeekr. But they recently started testing it, way ahead of what I thought they would...[2]

EDIT: -3?! Anyone have feedback? Genuinely surprised. :)

[1] May 10th to July 26th = 77 days 1,000,000 rides / 77 days = 12987 rides/day 12987 rides / days * 7 days/week = 90909 rides/week

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/23/the-waymo-zeekr-robotaxi-h... Steps: May 10th to June 1st = 21 days June 1 to June 30th = 30 days July 1st to July 26th = 26 days

1m rides in 67 days = 130k

It’s really impressive growth. Especially since they only have the iPace and not the zeeker yet. I’m really curious how much they will scale with the iPace.

You wouldn't expect Waymo to hockey stick though. It's not software.

Waymo's scale is constrained by many factors: (1) physical cars (requires capital), (2) hi-def mapping, (3) operations (depots to charge, clean and maintain cars, "fleet response" - https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/), and (4) regulatory environment (permits on a city/county/state basis).

10x YoY, 2x over last 10 weeks...

I suppose, if only for the sake of stimulating conversation, it is worth ignoring the substantive stuff to transmute "hockey stick" into "it is software, 0 and constant marginal cost"

I just don't really know what to say back, because I obviously don't think the self-driving car is software. You know that. I know that.

Waymo is philosophical offspring of google. And google hates hardware.They have a dedicated graveyard for that. So waymo could become just a service with minimal requirements to the platform any day. Thats the hockeystick..

> over 2 million paid rider-only trips completed

And how many of those trips were actually "rider only" and not "rider with remote assistance operator"?

> rider with remote assistance operator

Do you mean like, remote driver? Or a specialist had to help a fleet vehicle out of a weird hangup? Because based on my experience, it's probably nearly all of them minus some nominal percentage during events like navigating downtown Phoenix during Comicon.

If I remember reading, they can't remotely drive the vehicles.

Completed is a strong word. Mine wouldn’t let me out. I had to wait for it to stop at a light and bail. I’m pretty sure they should mark that a zero. MARK IT A ZERO DONNIE THIS ISNT NAM, THERE ARE RULES.

> Mine wouldn’t let me out. I had to wait for it to stop at a light and bail

You're upset it wouldn't let you out of a moving vehicle?

Some of us like to jump out of moving vehicles and do a cool roll or flip like in an action movie! This is yet another use case the Silicon Valley technocrats didn't consider...

Possibly they wanted it to stop near their destination somewhere and let them out, but instead it kept going. Therefore, they need to get out at the next place it happened to stop (which in this case was a stop light).

I have no experience with Waymo though, so I have no idea if this is the case, or if the car was repositioning to find a better place to let the rider out, or something else entirely.

“Smokey, this is not 'Nam. This is bowling. There are rules.“

being locked in a futuristic car thats the most first world problem of all first world problems lol

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