Jobs at the Hyundai factory start at $23.66/hour, with reasonably good benefits.[3]
[1] https://waymo.com/blog/2024/10/waymo-and-hyundai-enter-partn...
[3] https://careers-americas.hyundai.com/hmgma/job/Ellabell-Prod...
She was easily over 90, if not over 95.
People like her could really benefit from a personal Waymo. Just sell a car with FSD built in, at the level of a Waymo, and bam! That would make so many senior citizens' lives easier!
these people shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a car; to me one of the biggest annoyances with american life
In a neighborhood like Culdesac Mesa AZ, your father could downsize to an electric scooter. And maybe meet his neighbors.
And that’s better than mandating a small percentage of the population use FSD cars?
Not sure I like the autocratic tone of that plan
You can make walkable enclaves neighborhood by neighborhood. And those sites are really desirable. Especially near transit. The right approach is to build more like this until there's no one left who wants to live there and cannot. For the remaining folks who have no interest in it, sure, they can have automated cars.
But right now the line is out the door for this sort of place and we cannot build them fast enough.
Which is pretty fair because the parent poster was using a very uncharitable read of what they were replying to. 10000% the wrong approach, really?
[1] https://waymo.com/blog/2025/04/waymo-and-toyota-outline-stra...
It would work well for local municipalities that want to provide low-cost door-to-door service for the elderly.
We have a bus service here, The ART, and a dedicates "paratransit" bus service that provides door-to-door service to eligible riders.
And a couple private large-scale developed and managed neighborhoods that have driverless non-automated (remote controlled) transit systems.
If you know a large portion of your riders have disabilities, dedicated buses or vans make sense.
I'm sitting here advocating for this, and it's a great service that I'm glad they have it for those in need, and yet I need fucking plywood for hurricanes myself.
Yeah, it is Florida. But honestly, the transit system here and bike infrastructure development and traffic planning is good.
I think the word you were searching for is leasing the vehicle.
Car leasing tends to be time based. A self-driving car may depreciate more like an airplane, based on miles driven.
Because once they become ubiquitous, I suspect the vast majority will be operating in carpool mode at rush hour. Most people won't be willing to pay 4x to get a private vehicle if they're by themselves. Especially since the more vehicles there are, the more efficient carpool mode becomes for everyone.
Of course it's less attractive at the same price, but if it's cheaper enough it becomes more attractive for the average rider. And we can even imagine cities implementing single rider surcharges at rush hour to keep traffic running smoothly.
Rush hour will be a bottleneck. So something has to be done, and it will involve trading off price and convenience. Whether it's carpool mode or self-driving buses or likely a combination of the two.
But then thinking more about it I thought of how great we (all the people who like Waymo) think it performs around bikes and pedestrians. So now I agree with you directionally but you might not be taking it far enough. Once (if?) autonomous vehicles rule the road, and they're known to be safe, the future will likely be the broad spectrum from autonomous buses (on the large side) to super-cheap, bike-like vehicles (on the small side) that cost way less than a car. For a single occupant, if you knew another vehicle wasn't going to kill you, wouldn't you take an e-bike (with a cover and basket on it?) for short trips if the fee was proportionate to the cost of the vehicle? I would. Assumes lidar shrinks I guess and that automated kickstands are a thing, but that seems tractable in the years to come.
For a "bike" to balance you need a certain level of physical/mental engagement. How much value are you really getting from the self driving aspect, even if it were feasible, at that point?
At some point smart-car esque self driving vehicles will likely be possible, but self-driving unenclosed two wheelers? Pointless IMO.
A bike already fits your requirements, self driving would just make it more expensive.
If you want something enclosed, NYC has self-driving (from your perspective) trains and busses.
If you want enclosed and not-shared, I guess you just want a smaller car? Losing wheels wouldn't make it cheaper, IMO, because that makes a bunch of stuff more complicated.
Meaning their profits will rise as they inevitably increase prices
If you zoom out a bit, your argument would be more-or-less the same when regular automobiles were replacing the functioning transit systems in the USA, specifically in LA.
Look at Musk and Vegas. The vast majority of mass transportation in Vegas should be handled by actual public transit, most likely high speed rail from LA and light rail along the Strip to downtown Vegas and a few other places.
Instead Vegas has a silly monorail, a few buses that don't even get dedicated bus lanes on 8+ lane stroads and something stupid like, dunno, 20 daily flights from LA. Plus Musk setting up tunnels or hyperloops or other stupidities.
I've worked on autonomous vehicles for 16 years and my largest philanthropic effort is improving public transit. The common theme is being really interested in transportation and wanting it to work well for people.
Cruise was also the top funder of one San Francisco's recent MUNI funding ballot propositions (which just barely failed). You can certainly have a cynical take on that, but they still did it.
It's also not an actionable objection. Let's say we go and ban autonomous vehicles. Why wouldn't the same billionaires simply continue lobbying against public transit improvements and for the repeal of the ban? They have the money to do both.
We haven't failed to invest sufficiently in public transit for 50+ years solely because of billionaire lobbying. That's not the blocker.
The watermelons simply couldn't accept that, it went against their article of faith that capitalism is responsible for all of the world's problems and could not provide any solutions. IF there is one thing that makes them the most angry it is solving problems without going to their preferred political alignment. So they all downloaded their latest talking points and reprogrammed themselves and declared that electric car's only purpose is to save the auto industry in spite of 48% of global transport carbon emissions coming from cars and vans.
Last mile is a PITA in the US. It is difficult to take the train from San Diego northward if you don't get there at 7AM because the parking will fill up.
At some point, Waymo can cross over into replacing a personal car for the last mile task. Right now, it's a bit expensive: $20/ride 2 ride/day 5 days/week * 50 weeks = $10,000 per year. Purchasing your own car still makes more sense. If that were $1,000 per year? No brainer--I'd dump my car in a heartbeat.
False dichotomy.
Good public transport would be self driving cars as a feeder network to mass transit once the self driving tech is cheap enough.
It could only work well as work habits change to stop having peak hours (peak usage for low-utilization self-driving cars doesn't seem likely to be economical).
We badly need to move beyond GDP and to at least IHDI, if not something even better.
Beauty matters.
Paving stones are terrible for skates, and not great for running either. Poured concrete is much smoother. And it's not cut with circular saws so I have no idea what you're referring to there.
And it doesn't hurt to plant more trees. American cities, especially in the South, seem to be utterly allergic to trees. Which makes even less sense in hot climates.
Or huge billboards. Lack of general greenery and hedges to block noise. Stroads. I could go on an on. The average built environment in US cities and suburbs is awful and again, cheap.
I am not sure how this relates to the whole "public transit vs cars" argument though.
Why is "that person gets to be extraordinarily wealthy" for inventing the future rather than "we all chipped in so we could all benefit" for inventing the future?
If Waymos make the world better and safer and more convenient, why are they not simply something we figure out how to make a public good?
In Star Trek you didn't have to pay to take the turbolift or transporter around large spaces, everyone got the benefits of the technology.
Well obviously we want a lot of the benefit to be the latter. But if you don't have some of the former, then almost no multi-billion-dollar-cost inventions get made in the first place.
Alan Turing didn't pursue his ideas because he wanted to get wealth beyond imagining.
Mondragon makes billions of dollars annually, and strongly limits executive pay.
I think it's very reasonable to assume that we can, we have historically, and currently do, make multi-billion dollar investments for the good of all. The idea that it requires some profit incentive is, imo, a pernicious falsehood.
That was government-funded. Most projects aren't that lucky. And are any governments funding self-driving cars?
> Alan Turing didn't pursue his ideas because he wanted to get wealth beyond imagining.
I said multi billion dollar cost. Not multi billion dollar benefit. He's not an example.
> Mondragon makes billions of dollars annually, and strongly limits executive pay.
Have they made any inventions that required a billion dollars or more? Ten billion?
But you saying "makes billions" is exactly what I'm talking about. It's great that they don't pay a lot of money to executives and the workers own things. But the company invested money and the company profited. It didn't all go to making the world a better place.
You avoid particularly wealthy people when a coop can self-fund, but the coop is still trying to profit off the result of the research. And if a risky research project ever can't be self-funded, then whatever/whoever makes the loan might make a huge profit. If that incentive isn't there, the loan doesn't happen and the research doesn't happen.
> I think it's very reasonable to assume that we can, we have historically, and currently do, make multi-billion dollar investments for the good of all. The idea that it requires some profit incentive is, imo, a pernicious falsehood.
It doesn't require it, but if you make it possible to profit off research then you end up with much more money spent on research.
As for why it isn't something you can figure out how to make a public good? In order for it to truly be a public good you have to either make it as one in the first place via the public sector or at very least pay a large sum of money in order to buy it out (which you have already objected to). Otherwise it is just plain stealing.
From the parent post: > - this is literally science fiction come to life
Of course I'm going to reference fiction when I'm addressing a comment about how this is science fiction come to life. What are you on about?
And regardless, there's always a ceiling when it comes to what people will pay. In the case of a robotaxi there's of course significant marginal cost to expand the fleet of vehicles, but if they can make more money with more cars at a lower price point (than fewer cars at a higher price point), then they'll do so.
Oligopoly, cartels, huge barriers to entry into the market.
I appreciate your optimism in the free market for a domain where you have to spend tens of billions of dollars to even enter it
Compare with tech, which is what a Waymo is like: computers, TVs, etc are insanely cheap compared to their equivalents in the past.
I had to point out to a Gen Zer complaining about how video game companies keep jacking up prices ("this game for the Switch is $80!") by pointing out that when you adjusted for inflation, a Super Nintendo game cost over $100 in today's money.
https://insideevs.com/photos/802937/waymo-zeekr-robotaxi/#69...
Zeeker must have given them such an unbelievable deal that Google couldn't pass it up. Either that or the other OEMs have really soured on them. I always thought the idea of OEMs being reduced to generic white label badges while companies like Waymo make all the profit on the future of "on demand" transportation is not appealing to them. Companies like GM tried to cut Waymo out by buying Cruise but it hasn't worked out. I guess if the stock price of one of these OEMs falls enough, maybe Waymo can just buy them out but do they really want to take on that obligation?
https://www.savannahnow.com/story/news/2024/12/09/what-is-a-...
Unless you're saying "starvation wage" and "living wage" are the same thing, which I don't think is a reasonable characterization.
Only problem is if they decide to have a third kid, or if you have a single parent with one or more kids. And while I get that unforeseen things happen to people that lower their wages after they already have their kids, I'm also tired of people becoming parents without considering the financial aspects ahead of time. If you're making minimum wage and are barely surviving, don't have kids until you're on steadier ground.
Young is abolutely the best age to have kids. Ask biology.
If you want a society (I do) then you want a society that supports people having children.
If you want a healthy society (I do) then you want a society that supports people having children at a young age.
Modern norms have instead left many parents effectively on their own, juggling full-time work with full-time childcare. If multigenerational living were normalized, the retired could help raise the kids while the working adults focus on providing. That setup allows for more quality time rather than burnout.
This isn’t anecdotal. I didn’t grow up in a household like that. But the research supports it:
1. Older adults living with younger generations experience less loneliness, better mental health, and even longer lifespans. 2. Multigenerational households are more financially resilient, less likely to live in poverty, and able to share housing, food, and caregiving costs. 3. Children benefit cognitively and emotionally from regular grandparent involvement. 4. Multigenerational setups enable parents to stay in the workforce while providing more consistent and affordable childcare. 5. Families in these homes report stronger relationships and better intergenerational understanding.
Of course there are challenges. Privacy, space, and generational conflict are real. But with today's social isolation, rising living costs, and aging demographics, we might want to normalize this kind of household again.
Maybe the future isn't just smarter cities or more automation, but rethinking how we live together.
---
*Sources:*
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9876343/ 2. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/03/24/the-inc... 3. https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/article/75/6/12... 4. https://www.gu.org/app/uploads/2021/03/FamilyMatters2021.pdf 5. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db255.pdf
They also didn’t have jobs for programmers, so I moved to where they did.
Which neighbourhood is it?
How do you characterize the poverty line, since it's much much lower?
The entire point of the term "living wage" is that it's fine. Yes including the ability to save up for unexpected costs.
Most people wouldn't want to live like me (I don't drink, I don't holiday abroad, I don't have kids, or expensive hobbies), but I prefer this. Also, some of the discrepancy is explained by the annoying "Being poor is expensive" where I can make choices that are cheaper over the long term but would be ruinously expensive for a poor person.
Did you read the methodology page or even my comment? I made specific objections with the methodology and you didn't even address them.
>Life tends to always have unexpected costs. I shouldn't need to tell anybody that, including you.
I shouldn't have to tell you that if you read the methodology page, you'd see there's a specific category for "Other necessities" and "Civic engagement" (whatever that means), and I'm not objecting to those categories.
And the Hyundai Metaplant is not in Savannah itself.
> In Chatham County, the living wage per hour necessary for one adult with no children is $22.46
https://www.savannahnow.com/story/news/2024/12/09/what-is-a-...