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Comment by throwawayffffas | Hacker News Reader

> Starting today, riders who request an UberX, Uber Green, Comfort, or Comfort Electric could be matched with a Waymo fully autonomous all-electric Jaguar I-PACE vehicle – at no additional cost.

That made legit laugh out loud. No additional cost? Are you for real Uber? It should be significantly cheaper.

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Have you taken a Waymo before? The car and ride in general is much nicer than your average Uber or Lyft ride.

I have not and I believe you. But seriously, the incentive for automating anything is cost. Even if it's nicer, the removal of the driver does not make it a "premium" service, it makes it an automated service. The expectation is lower cost not higher. I know that supply and demand and competition right now might be at a place where the same price for eventually the same service is expected. But still "at no additional cost" read hilarious.

> the incentive for automating anything is cost

Cost savings are a huge factor, but in self-driving (and other areas) safety and consistency are equally important.

Waymo's make mistakes, but they don't get tired, drunk, distracted, or angry.

Anecdotally, I use rideshare every workday for last-mile transit from the train station, and I’ll pick the $13 Waymo over the $7 Uber every time. There are some inherent advantages to the self-driving, like improved safety [0] and not having to talk to the driver, but the main benefits are that it’s just a consistent experience with nice quiet cars, ~90%-ile driving quality, and much more accurate time estimates.

I look forward to competition bringing prices down, but on pure quality and willingness to pay, the premium price seems to make sense.

[0] https://waymo.com/research/do-autonomous-vehicles-outperform...

Maybe that's the true progress in self-driving. It's cheaper and better. It's a win/win. Now we just need UBI and it can be a win/win/win.

Why should a totally private ride with a safe driver cost less than a ride with a driver who might be drunk, tired, distracted, reckless, and/or rude?

"Safe driver" while the Waymo won't be drunk, tired, distracted, reckless or rude. It may fail in many other ways, from software bugs, ML errors, to hardware failure.

> It may fail in many other ways, from software bugs, ML errors, to hardware failure.

Definitely a risk, but one that has been well studied. Waymo is safer than other drivers in the areas it operates: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/12/new-swiss-re-study-waymo

Do you not want it to cost less?

Because the input costs are less?

Apollo Go robotaxi offers rides for 4 yuan/50 cents.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/18/cars/china-baidu-apollo-go-ro...

This is a new technology. Early adopters of almost anything will pay more as it takes time to scale up and improve unit economics. reply

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