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Comment by OkayPhysicist | Hacker News Reader

Inside SF, my experience is that Uber and Lyft are ~10-15% cheaper than Waymo, but that's before tipping. I don't have to tip a robot, so they work out to nearly identical prices.

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You don't have to tip an Uber or Lyft driver either.

Preach.

>I don't have to tip a robot

Now that tips are tax free, it's only a matter of time before some clever SV accountants figure out how make everything a tip.

Self-serve ordering terminals already often ask for tips. Presumably to be legal they're being paid to the kitchen staff, but I think sticking to "tips are for workers who have to pretend to like me" is a pretty firm boundary to stick to.

(Also, arbitrarily reclassifying things as tips is hard, because legally 100% of tip revenue has to go to workers, not management, and certainly not the company's investors or coffers).

That's why they're clever accountants.

Tax-free tips paid to robots go to the hardworking AI engineers -> AI engineers voluntarily donate part of their tips to a 501(c)(3) that helps support struggling venture capitalists.

Something like that. We'll work it out the details once the right PAC donations are in place.

You also don't have to tip a taxi driver. They get paid for giving rides, it's not an extra service.

Yup, but it is kinda culturally expected to tip. You're right, you dont need to, but then again we do a lot of things just because it is .. polite.

Waymo food delivery will be incredible. You won't even get your food if you don't tip your ubereats.

The inherent problem there is the edges, most food delivery isn't the trip, it's the person getting out of the vehicle and putting it on your doorstep or going through the building. Zipline and their droneports for buildings seem to have the better solution, at least until waymo has some sort of legged robot that can bring the bag the last meter(s)

Aren't the "first meters" also pretty problematic? Are Waymos going to double park in front of a restaurant waiting for someone to come out and put the right order in the right vehicle?

That's easier to do with training, and the business is usually more willing than a consumer as it increases their business. Anecdotally, see how many of them (at least locally to myself) have adopted the doordash/grubhub tablets in their kitchen ordering system. I imagine it would be a co-packing situation with lockers on wheels similar to the vehicle KFC uses in China: https://www.mashed.com/284555/the-futuristic-way-kfc-is-sell...

Uber's NURO seems to be developing a vehicle with a similar form factor as seen on this page: https://www.nuro.ai/first-responders

EDIT: see comment below, uber does not own NURO

Nuro is an independent company from Uber, the latter just has a partnership with and some investment in the former. Uber has similar relationships with more than half the industry at this point.

My anecdotal evidence also has so many incorrect orders that I'm a wee bit less optimistic than you about restaurant-side human handling of the first meters. :)

A lot of restaurants already have dedicated parking spots where they'll bring the food out.

I feel like that's already quite special-case-y.

Certainly wouldn't apply to anywhere near where I currently live (then again, neither does Waymo).

I think the frustration with tips is so prevalent that the advertising could just be "Skip the tip, simply walk to the street to pick up your order!"

Would work great in suburbs where a robot car could pull in front of home for a minute or two, your food will be bid to another customer if you don't pick it up in 5 minutes. maybe the little robots in NYC are better.

I would argue that the sidewalk robots are too hard to coordinate and not strong enough to hold up against crime, the solution is somewhat closer to my other comment below, a vehicle with maybe 4 or 8 food cells that can fill up at various locations then make its journey around the city. At that point the problem would be idle timeouts and how to handle disgruntled consumers that lost their window for pickup

I have a relative in Texas who is looking into leasing a drone to operate for food delivery. Apparently, that's already a thing there? If we could get food/small packages delivered to our building's roof instead of the front door, it would be a huge win for everyone in the building.

Using an otherwise empty 5 person vehicle to move a grocery bag worth of food is pretty stupid though

If it's a robot, why can't it have 10 lockers, and the right one pops open when it arrives to your place?

The longer the route, the harder it is for the food to stay fresh and warm/cold/frozen. It's a trade-off between efficiency, price, and customer satisfaction.

On average that's only moving 5 orders maybe a pound or three each around with a 4000+lb vehicle. Still terribly inefficient considering how much of the energy being spent is simply to move the vehicle vs achieving work.

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