That's literally an edge case. For shorter trips, I've found it to be slightly cheaper (especially factoring in the lack of tips) with maybe a slightly longer wait.
Currently, on Wednesday March 26th at 8:34 a ride from Bar Part Time in the Mission to Verjus in North Beach is $21.17 with a estimated 8 minute pickup time. The same ride on UberX has an estimated 2 minute pickup time at a cost of $15.34. I could see it being cheaper if you top 20% - but I don't tip nearly that high on Uber rides.
I will admit that I could possibly be self-selecting to peak times as I own a car in the city, so I only use ride share in the evenings; so it may very well be the case that the price/wait is more competitive at off-peak hours.
Furthermore, it's quite surprising to me that it seems that the human labor cost doesn't affect the price at all. The only price controls seems to be demand and the latent demand is enough to create a price floor where there is always a human that is willing to drive. It also seems like plain old logistics and traffic will prevent Waymo from providing enough supply to offer dirt cheap rides. The fact that a ride that would have cost me $5 in 2016 is almost 4x as much with "magic self driving technology" is not something I could have told my 2016 self.
Not all Waymo riders actually want the premium cars and we can’t assume that’s why they are choosing Waymo.
We have to assume that some and perhaps most riders would prefer to pay less to ride in a cheaper car but are mainly choosing Waymo because its autonomous (cool factor, the no-human factor).
Also, California mandates autonomous vehicles be fully electric by 2030. So Waymo literally has to be driving some kind of EV to comply very soon.
Jaguar’s I-pace was a poor-selling EV SUV from a struggling company with a lot of leftover inventory, so it’s almost a guarantee that Waymo got a great fleet deal on them.
(This is a city where buying a simple 40¢ metro ticket requires showing identification.)
My medium sized American city: “what train? What bus? What taxi?
I think the best evidence of that is how uber/lyft has to use grey-ish patterns to get you to choose upmarket options. They don’t list the fares sorted by price or even list the options in a consistent order, they will strongly suggest upsells like comfort or black or whatever tier they think gives the best chance of convincing you to pay more than the bare minimum.
They also upsell faster pickup which I have to think is a way better value proposition than sitting in a nicer car temporarily.