Anyone know the timeline for Waymo expanding to northern areas outside urban centers? Or are these underserved populations forever stuck waiting hours for an Uber that still cancels half the time?
Removing the driver from a taxi doesn’t bring down costs that much. Self driving cars aren’t going to change the uber/taxi model at a fundamental level.
They have a finite fleet that they need to deploy. Urban centers mean that fleet utilization is high, and relatively less time and miles are spent driving with no one on board. In rural areas with little demand they will sit empty or have to drive empty for many more miles to their pickups. It just isn’t profitable to use your fleet that way no matter what you do.
That being said, there is still the cost of maintenance and cleanup, but that can be mitigated (the taxis for five towns could drive to one centralised depot, maintenance can be scheduled to maximise operational time, and eventually all of this can be automated, too)
I don't know if that's how things will work out just yet, but it seems like a possible future based on Waymo's current operational strategy.
I think you’re dramatically overestimating how much of a barrier obtaining a driver is here. The primary cost is opportunity cost of the capital that isn’t being utilized. Not having to have a driver doesn’t somehow make it so you can infinitely provision a fleet.
How much this matters depends on the price of the car. We don’t know how much a Waymo costs, but they’re probably not cheap.
To be profitable with lower utilization, they’ll need to work on reducing how much each car costs somehow.
Definitely. Their custom vehicle had optimizations for cost, but seems to be on hold due to tariffs.
Waymo also has the option to drop prices lower than Uber/Lyft when vehicles are unutilized, though they still need to stay above their per-mile depreciation and operating costs.
I think that’s an unproven assumption.
There’s certainly reason to believe it to be true of course, but uber and Lyft are already capturing upwards of 50% of the fares for each ride, and that’s without the capital costs on their books. Removing the driver from the equation can’t lead to much more than that 50% (realistically much less) margin.
Going from charging $10 to $5 isn’t going to make rides suddenly materialize. Especially in rural areas there are just times that people aren’t going to be looking to go anywhere, and wait time becomes far more of a factor that raw costs.
That's not true. If you check Uber's Q3 financials, gross bookings for "Mobility" were $21B while revenue was $6.5B. That's way lower than 50%.
I'm not sure if that's an accurate number, but I have seen a lot of complaints from drivers that they're getting a far lower share of the trip revenue than they used to. It's pretty remarkable that in a competitive market where Uber and Lyft are almost perfect substitutes for each other and charge almost exactly the same prices, that they're able to maintain these gross margins.
It will be interesting to see how things develop once the driver is no longer required and cost is the most important factor (after safety). Exciting times!
Logistically you need the flexibility of having more seats available. If you’re in a rural area and need to transport a family are you going to send 4 vehicles separately?
Ironically it’s probably urban areas where single occupancy vehicles make the most sense, given that there’s always going to be sufficient demand to allow for more specialization in vehicles for different use cases.
Probably still years off, but Waymo will probably have a library of vehicles ranging from 2 seats to 20.
1. Reduced curb space dedicated to parking. If you don't need to come back to the same vehicle you only need space to be picked up/dropped off, reducing the amount of parking spaces needed. This space could be used for separated bike lanes. 2. Safer - This is still an unknown but data looks good atm [1]. It would be even better if AVs could be design to prevent cyclists being doored that would be amazing.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/12/human-drivers-crash-a-l...
Self-driving cars will eventually lower the total cost of driving and it will allow for longer commutes as people will be able to either sleep or do some work while in the vehicle.
The inevitable consequence of that is an increase of car traffic, which means more congestion, noise and air pollution (tires and brake pads). We can't know whether the theoretically lower collisions per distance traveled will translate into lower actual injuries until we know how much the distance traveled will increase.
Most importantly, the more people rely on a particular form of transport, the more they will vote to facilitate it, via more lanes, more highways, more forgiving legislation, etc.
I would rather see more active transportation and more efficient forms of transportation. Four-wheel single occupancy vehicles are just about the worst option of all.
The driver is THE overwhelming cost of a taxi/uber. What are you talking about?
Your problem is you’re not seeing past the costs of a Waymo vehicle with all its sensors and LiDAR, plus all the costs of keeping high definition maps updated, and having teleoperaters on hand.
Tesla doesn’t have those costs. Their FSD version 13 already drives close to a Waymo of not better in some circumstances. its a done deal, Tesla has won this game
A driver's salary costs as much as a new car. Every year.
The average pay for a gig driver $18/hr. So for your typical 15-minute ride, that adds $4.50 to it.
Let's say that 15 minute ride is 10 miles. Average. Uber rates are about $1.50 a mile, so that ride is $15.
Therefore, the driver costs almost a third of the cost of the fare.
Waymo's operational cost per mile, however, should be much lower than a regular driver because they will pay lower bulk rates for energy (already much cheaper because it's mostly off peak electricity instead of gasoline) and maintenance (standardized vehicles with highly controlled driving patterns and pre-negotiated repair contracts).
An average per-trip reduction of ~50% changes the economics entirely.
One interesting thing today is that CoL can be as high in rural areas as urban areas in the same state, partly because the additional costs of things that don't scale (mostly transportation and healthcare). But we've given up on government helping people, apparently.
It's not unreasonable to me that they would subsidize robo-taxis for those services since they are already funding services that are expensive or inadequate. Especially if there is some give and take to be had with regulatory overhead for the taxi service.
The deal has always been and will always be the same for the rural people: more freedom for less things to do.