Miami, your Waymo ride is ready | Hacker News Reader

Miami, your Waymo ride is ready

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87 pointsChrisArchitect166 comments

I was at a conference in Phoenix in November and took seven Waymo trips during my stay. Four of those were fairly long (20-minute) trips. I preferred Waymo to the Uber/Lyft experience because it felt private. It was just me and my colleagues in the car, no strangers. It also felt futuristic and novel, which I'm sure will wear off. We experienced no weird or erratic driving, with one minor exception... Waymo always followed the speed limit. On a major road where the speed limit was 40mph, other cars were zipping around us at 55mph+. And, one parking lot had 5mph speed limit signs posted. As you can imagine, Waymo was the slowest vehicle in that parking lot by a wide margin.

Do they have microphones inside the car? How do you know? That "feeling" of privacy probably encourages people to talk more openly, which if there are microphones inside...

they are disabled by default unless you call support etc.

Yes, they do. I know because they’re disclosed, and how they’re used is disclosed. (They’re disabled unless you call support.)

I’d say about 30% of the time I take an Uber, I have an interesting conversation with the driver. The best instance of this was about a decade ago, when the driver was a guy from Syria, and he explained the ongoing civil war there and the various factions as we drove 45 minutes across LA.

Self-driving cars are just one more way everyone becomes isolated from each other, I guess.

Another 30% of the time, the driver is making calls to the DMV or spouting conspiracy theories during the drive. I enjoy talking to strangers casually when I can easily walk away, but I don't enjoy being forced to talk to strangers casually over a half hour ride.

I did the same in the Bay Area this week, and had the same experience as you. Not that I hate human drivers, but sometimes it was nice after being around people all day to just have some personal space. And my trips were also around your length and similarly uneventful. I definitely can't wait til they are around my area.

We got these in Atlanta. I haven't had the chance to ride yet but watching them it's pretty clear that they're legit.

I think we're on the cusp of something that will change the landscape of our cities. It's going to revolutionize getting around and take a chunk out of the land dedicated to parking.

It will also funnel large amounts of revenue out of every city into s/SF/Bay Area. Currently around 35% of the money spent on Uber/Lyft stays in the local economy. Waymo in SF still employs a large number of highly paid engineers who are paid the money which used to move through SF via Uber/Lyft. And those SF engineers spend a decent chunk of it locally on food, art, entertainment, and various other services - so it has (somewhat) less of an effect on the city's overall economy/total employment.

Waymo in Miami won't be locally re-spending nearly as much of Miami's money as Uber/Lyft did. Significantly more of it will be removed from Miami with each ride. This might be even more pronounced for cities like Houston, which don't attract tourism from Waymo staff.

> It will also funnel large amounts of revenue out of every city into SF.

Why SF? Does Google even still have an engineering office in the city? Alphabet is a publicly traded company with employees all over the USA and the world, even if you said the money would be funneled into Mountain View you'd be incorrect. The money will be funneled into 401Ks would be more accurate, and a lot of snowbirds in Florida are living off of their 401Ks and stock investments (which probably have a lot of Alphabet in them), so it is definitely something for Florida.

But I think your point is that gig workers won't be making the money anymore. That's definitely true. That is just like when loom machines took money away from weavers back in the 19th century, or computers took money away from typists/secretaries in the 20th century. We should carefully consider whether or not that is a net good for society.

are there examples of jobs going obsolete being a net harm to society, over a long time scale?

surely it's good to reduce the amount of menial labour being performed in the world

The loss of manufacturing jobs and the movement of jobs in to services has been hard for the US, and is basically where MAGA came from, which I would say is a net harm to society. We wouldn't be arguing about Waymo right now if those Uber drivers had better jobs making things instead of being forced into gig work.

Midwives were replaced by the male-dominated medical industry, which initially raised infant mortality, nevermind women losing autonomy over birth.

Night soil collectors were replaced by partial sewage systems, which resulted in cholera and typhoid outbreaks.

Local butchers were replaced by meat packing plants. The Jungle tells us why this didn't go so well either.

In all three of those cases, we rushed to an incomplete solution before it was fully ready. In this case though, no one's banning humans from driving cars anytime soon, so that part of it will go okay.

> That is just like when loom machines took money away from weavers back in the 19th century, or computers took money away from typists/secretaries in the 20th century. We should carefully consider whether or not that is a net good for society.

I don't want to sound like a luddite, but each of those contributed to a consolidation of wealth that was largely offset by new jobs and new markets. How exactly do you think this is paying off here? Tech companies get to benefit, we know that, which sounds like a dead end. So it's ok that everyone else loses?

> I don't want to sound like a luddite

it's not a dirty word. being a luddite means caring about your professional and personal communities.

It's a loaded word by this point. The luddites smashed stocking frame looms. At first those looms were human powered, and then water powered, and then steam engines came onto the scene. Steam engines where when people got wrecked. Those things were a menace! They'd crush limbs, amputate fingers, give you horrible RSI, fuck up your lungs with all the dirt in the air. The worst part is that children were better for it because they have little fingers which were better at fixing the machines. The late 16th Century didn't have the legal system in place that we have. OHSA, labor law, unions, liability, insurance. Those are all things that didn't exist back then but do now.

So these days, saying you're luddite doesn't mean you care about your professional and personal communities, it says you're anti-technology and anti-progress. If you want to say you care about your professional and personal communities, just say that.

Their arguments back then are not different at all to those today’s. Luddism was always about protecting jobs, a was against tech (self driving cars or automated looms) that would eliminate those jobs. Smashing a Waymo in SF is not much different from smashing up an automatic loom.

No, Luddists were always about protecting their own jobs.

Not really, it parallels the movements of today almost too perfectly:

The Luddites (1811–1816) were not merely destroying machines to stop technological progress; they were a broader, community-backed protest movement fighting for economic survival, fair wages, and against the erosion of their traditional, skilled way of life. While they were textile artisans at the core, the movement was fueled by widespread distress during the Napoleonic Wars and received support from local communities and even some sympathetic small-business owners.

> OHSA, labor law, unions, liability, insurance. Those are all things that didn't exist back then but do now.

what social movement could possibly have been an early progenitor of the modern labor rights movement?

The purely 'luddite' argument is rather obvious. Exploring the effects of that new path of money are somewhat more interesting to me. I believe that the cash flow will be much more concentrated, both by geography and cohort.

Even just taking it at face value that "the vast majority of the 35% of the fare that would have gone to the drivers will now go to '401k's" is interesting! Currently most drivers for Lyft/Uber are in the bottom 50%ile of wealth in the USA, and they are currently getting that 35% cut. The bottom 50% of the USA hold nearly no stocks at all. 50% of the S&P500 shares are owned by the wealthiest 1% of the USA.

Also, computers and looms were perhaps a bit different - the result of their automation was a product that actually cost less than their equivalent human labor could produce. Waymo currently charges more than Uber and Lyft, but still takes significant market share.

I do expect them to be cheaper eventually, but they'll also have an opportunity to establish market monopolies and then raise prices again. Sure, uber and lyft driver supply is obviously elastic, but possibly not quite as elastic in the very long run - it took a lot of capital to raise the current driver base for Uber+Lyft, and I'm not sure that can be repeated, say, five years after people stopped driving for them.

Of course people have to get new jobs as the world churns. But all of these other effects are interesting too! And, many, many people never really attain those new jobs. I don't think that's Waymo's "fault" as a moral judgment if the reality is that removing money from these jobs will lead to increase in squalor. It's just a pretty stark example of the rich getting richer.

> The money will be funneled into 401K

Only the money from Alphabet employees who put money into their 401k will end up there. Other parts go to taxes paid by Alphabet and taxes paid by the employees. The vast majority though will go into Alphabet's coffers and be used to pay back investors and make big bets on the future (ideally). Sundar gets a bunch, as does Sergey and Brin. Waymo's taken more than a decade to get this far (and it's not quite there yet). DARPA jump-started this with their Grand Challenge in 2004, so I think the government does deserve a bunch of tax revenue off of this.

Index funds have a lot of alphabet these days, so most 401ks are heavily vested in it. Future productivity increases are paying for our retirements one way prove other, especially since the birth rate is tanking.

Not sure about the 35% here.

If I spend 100$ on an uber ride, 65$ goes to Uber while only 35$ is local ?

I thought it's was the other way around with a margin of 30% for Uber.

I usually ask most of my drivers how much they're getting paid for each ride. Across MCOL and HCOL areas like SF, NYC, HTX, ATX, DMV - I've generally been seeing around 40% going to the driver.

For example, this route shows for me at $57 (-$10 discount = $47) but the driver sees $20: https://www.reddit.com/r/uberdrivers/comments/1q5z1dg/f_you_...

I think the pie will grow more than Waymo takes out. Stuff like a plumber realizing they're missing a part. What might be a trip to the supply house can be a self driving delivery instead.

Either way, it's not all that much different. Most of the money spent on getting around a city goes elsewhere through vehicle and gas purchases. Adding the cost of self driving to that probably won't move the needle all that much.

> What might be a trip to the supply house can be a self driving delivery instead.

I think part replacement is an excellent use case for robotic delivery and even the Wing service if suitable weight and size.

Isn't that how it always is when new technology disrupts an existing market? We no longer have telephone operators, toll booth agents, gas pump attendants, etc

Those all eliminated the work so that no one had to pay for it anymore, which freed up that money to be spent elsewhere in the local economy. Waymo is not cheaper than Lyft/Uber. So it's more of a direct wealth-transfer than the most cursory analogies were.

Eventually, it will be General Motors, Ford etc. who are getting their revenue streams obliterated by self-driving vehicle.

If Waymo is not cheaper, I don't see how it replaces Lyft/Uber. I imagine that not having to pay drivers and the deal with the associated liability, will eventually be cheaper so will free up money.

You don't think this will also have an effect on improving life in the cities where Waymo is utilized? I understand there is the threat to induced demand with too many waymo's being on the road but this is going to help improve city living and in turn, help increase people wanting to live there.

Did uber?

Drunk driving goes down significantly, for one thing.

Hard to control for that against the decline in social drinking in general

It might but I’ll be still driving home “intoxicated” so long as the vehicle I drove to the drinking establishment can’t drive itself home. This is why I prefer the model for personal self driving vehicles.

Tesla FSD will pull over if you fall asleep while driving. Ford's will just plow into the median for you. Their relative stock prices reflect this.

There is a service/app for this in South Korea (Daeri Unjeon, "proxy driving"); a guy will drive you in your car to your home.

but then that guy has to get home somehow

Sure, they carry a escooter or work in pairs - the second one has a car and picks him up at the destination.

Honestly, in a lot of ways, yes. I'm a massive critic of Uber, but outside of the hotel areas and nicest neighborhoods, it was often incredibly difficult to successfully call a taxi to pick you up before Uber.

I remember once playing ball all day in the front yard, calling all the taxi companies just on a lark. They'd claim they were sending a driver, that the driver pulled up and honked, but we were outside the entire time. No one ever actually drove up over about 20 calls to 6 cab companies.

Uber/Lyft finally served all neighborhoods mostly equally, and that was a huge benefit.

Why were you calling cabs you had no intention of taking?

We would have taken the cabs and grabbed some drinks. We were well-entertained either way. One of the few times that worked well for the experiment.

At least in SF, last I checked, it's as expensive, or sometimes more expensive, as Uber/Lyft. It'll serve the same sector of the population as those apps already do, so it's unlikely to actually reduce parking needs.

There's an argument that more competition could reduce prices and/or wait times for consumers, but there's also the argument it'll take away gig jobs, which are already somewhat of a "backup net" for people who need money but can't find a formal job for some other reason.

I don't live in SF anymore. When I did and now that I occasionally visit, I personally don't see any meaningful difference from when only Lyft and Uber operated there.

So many things wrong with the assumptions and chain of reasoning in this comment.

The easiest example is to look at Detroit.

Although, perhaps the username is a signal, and I fell for it.

Good illustration of input/output economics; a discipline that mainstream economics tends to elide over for reasons that escape me.

To the best of my knowledge, Waymo still has humans in the loop as Fleet Response agents that the vehicles can call for remote assistance when they aren't sure what to do. Caveat that the number needed likely isn't on the same order of magnitude as human drivers, but the job is likely higher paying. I could see a scenario where these should be locals for both latency (ChatGPT says SF to Miami RTT latency might be 80-100 ms and I don't believe the humans really teleoperate the vehicles, so that may not be meaningful, but that might be a bigger deal for international expansion) and knowledge of tricky intersections or road quirks in the city. They could also potentially help with labeling quirky city-specific scenarios and other various evals.

> the job is likely higher paying.

I doubt it, it's a call center in the Philippines, where $1 USD goes quite far.

IMHO you are thinking too much in the near term.

I strongly believe that if you extrapolate 5-10 years then at that point the really big revenue stream(s) that self-driving cars will be funneling to themselves will revenue poached from the legacy auto manufacturers and adjacent industries.

And I also think this is a good thing.

With Waymo usually double the price of taxis this, to put it mildly, won't happen. Taxis, obviously, do not compare favorably to just owning a car. It's just not realistic unless you barely do any driving at all.

Not for me. Right now, Thursday, ~7pm. The given Waymo ride I'm looking at is going to cost me $30. Uber black is $42, UberX is $20, UberXL is $25. Uber wait & save is $17. Lyft priority is $23, Standard is $19, Wait and save is $17, Extra comfort is $26, Lyft Black is $46.

The taxi ride I took from the airport yesterday was $60 with tip but Uber would have been $40. Waymo doesn't go to the airport yet tho.

> adjacent industries

Insurance, gas stations, transit systems, car mechanics, parking garages/lots, airlines(?!). The possibilities are really staggering.

This could be as big a transition as from horse -> automobile.

> It will also funnel large amounts of revenue out of every city into s/SF/Bay Area.

I have some bad news for you about Amazon, Facebook (+Instagram), TikTok...

If the cost per ride is 35% cheaper than Uber/Lyft, then that money stays in the local economy, just in the hands of the consumer rather than the gig worker. Currently WayMo is more expensive, but I see that changing as they scale. And certainly CyberCab is promising to be much cheaper.

Have you watched them operate in a downpour? They've so far only been tested in semiarid locales.

> Have you watched them operate in a downpour?

Waymo in heavy rain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG6u6QfTv6s

> only been tested in semiarid locales

Is San Francisco semi-arid?

I’m skeptical. Is the presence of a human driver keeping you from using Uber/Lyft/taxis more than you currently are? Why would you think removing a driver will lead to more ride share trips? Capitalism is going to do its thing, so between the touted benefits of driverless ride shares and capitalist economics, could you please explain how exactly our city landscapes, namely parking lots, will be revolutionized in any way, shape, or form other than zombie lots occupied Waymos endlessly arranging and charging themselves? Forgive my cynicism, it feels like I’ve seen this how this dream turns out many times before.

The zombie lots can be consolidated and moved to less desirable areas.

And I think there's some demand shifting that can happen. People get driven to the office in the morning. Deliveries happen during the day and then people are driven home.

It also eliminates the need for parking for a lot of places. A restaurant doesn't need a parking lot if people are primarily arriving in self driving cars.

> Is the presence of a human driver keeping you from using Uber/Lyft/taxis more than you currently are?

Yep. A couple of bad experiences with Uber/Lyft drivers put me off using them. Waymo is honestly more comfortable/less stressful for me. Similarly, I just read an article discussing parents making use of Waymo to schlep their kids to sportball practice/friend's house/wherever kids hang out these days, even though it is against Waymo's terms of service. The article indicated those parents didn't trust their kids to be in a car along with a strange human, but were ok with an automated system (and violating the ToS of that system).

> please explain how exactly our city landscapes, namely parking lots, will be revolutionized in any way, shape, or form other than zombie lots occupied Waymos

Today parking tends to be located near the shop/restaurant/office people want to go to. If people no longer need to park to go to where they want to go, parking (for charging) can relocate and be concentrated, thereby freeing up the parking spaces for other uses.

Thanks for the reply. The perception of safety in attended ride shares is masking the larger economic constraint. So let's assume for sake of conversation that your safety concerns are warranted. I'd ask you to consider how much money additional money you're willing to spend on ride shares. The urban utopia of autonomous vehicles is often championed, yet fully unconsidered in a capitalist regime. How much additional money do you expect most Americans to spend toward ride shares, to the degree that they abandon vehicle ownership? What degree of broad behavior and spending change do you expect to occur as result of unattended ride shares?

I've never been as scared in a car as I was in an Uber in Chicago going to the airport. That man drove around cars like we were bleeding out in his car and had to get to the hospital or someone was going to die.

I bet his review distribution is highly bimodal.

I think I had this same driver.

> Is the presence of a human driver keeping you from using Uber/Lyft/taxis more than you currently are?

I have no horse in this race, but for my female family members, the answer is absolutely yes. The odds of getting a weirdo driver are just too high. One of them lives in a Waymo-supported city and uses it all the time.

> Why would you think removing a driver will lead to more ride share trips?

The last couple of drivers I had were so actively dangerous on the road that I quit using ridesharing completely.

After experiencing Waymo, I'll actually use ridesharing again.

Any idea how much they cost? Because for me the main use is mostly one off rides to the city to have drinks with friends and go there and come home safely. I live in Central Florida, I mostly use Uber or Lyft for these scenarios.

In SF, Waymo costs about the same as an Uber or Lyft after factoring in a couple buck tip. For awhile, I checked both Uber and Waymo when I wanted to get somewhere, but after not seeing significant price differences I stopped bothering.

I guess the other thing is you dont have to tip your AI driver.

They're more expensive than Uber and Lyft including tips.

I can't speak to San Francisco, but in Los Angeles the waymo has been cheaper than the Uber even before tip every time I've compared them

Is that a recent shift? When I was there in the summer they were marginally more expensive pre-tip.

Can you elaborate? Are you saying you think people are going to give up their cars because Waymo is available?

I think it fundamentally shifts the cost of transport from marginal to capitalized. Meaning a 20 minute trip is $0.50 of gas and some fraction of the manufacturing cost of the car. Today it's that plus $5-10 to the driver.

It's somewhat equivalent to the advent of trains but on a personal level. In the way that trains made shipping goods across the country more or less free once the rail was built that's what's going to happen to people and packages getting around cities.

Remind me who's owning and operating these driverless cars? A private company?

Probably but I go back and forth. Likely means that it will end up a mix like taxis and private cars are today

We've had it for a few years in SF and, while it's very convenient, I haven't witnessed the revolution you speak of. Judging from the traffic, people still mostly get around in their personal vehicles. There's about as much parking as before and it's still a nightmare. But I'd like to believe.

My prediction is it will make our cities worse. In 30 years every family will want one self driving car per person in the household

If they can figure out how to really take advantage of economies of scale, and drive the costs down quite a lot -- the desirability of car ownership will drop dramatically.

Everyone I know under 40yo already professes to hate driving and hate car ownership.

Owning a car and living somewhere you have to use it for day to day everything is tedious. But the option of one for the weekend, trips out of town, into nature is ultra valuable, enough so that it's worth it to have a car sitting doing nothing during the week for us, even in a well connected large city, in a walkable area.

At present or I suspect future costs, any kind of taxi for an out of town trip (without any rail option) of 50-100 miles is way too expensive to consider, we'd sooner hire a car, if it was slicker and more convenient. But hiring a car anywhere but an airport terminal needs a trip to the hire place, and needs to start and finish when they're open to avoid spending an extra day or two of hire. Plus time taken on paperwork and insurance faff could easily be an hour.

When I was working for the automotive industry their models and projections suggested that ubiquitous self-driving cars would reduce the total market for cars to ~15% of its current size. As in, sales would drop by 85%. The addressable market for automotive OEMs is set to undergo a dramatic reduction in size.

Few automotive companies have a coherent plan for how they were going to survive that existential risk.

Sorry, but at the current price of Waymo rides that just can't happen. They become more expensive than leasing a car at something like 8 rides per month (as in, get into a Waymo, expect to pay $60 per ride)

Oh and this price was going up, not down.

Current price no, but future price maybe. There's already a market for it, and a lot of pent up demand.

This justifies wholesale fleet purchases of EVs. A competitor could come in with a cheaper model. There will be a lot of players who want a piece.

Isn't this the same as saying that if cars drop in price 2x the opposite will happen?

> They become more expensive than leasing a car at something like 8 rides per month

Does this include fuel, insurance, repair, parking, registration, maintenance, etc.?

People will still be doing about the same number of miles per year, and cars will still last a similar number of miles. So if a ride share car does 10x as many miles per year we need 1/10 the cars, but they also last 1/10 as long, so it evens out.

Sure they'll get slightly more miles out of a ride share car, but the number of miles will also go up do to dead heading and because cheaper/better transportation causes prior to use more of it.

Why?

At worst you can just pay extra to have a smaller or more luxurious private self driving taxi vs. something more like a bus, shared with others. The appeal of owning and having to maintain something like this is nil. You're not in control, there's no ownership of the driving experience, and if appropriately compliant with the law, they should all drive the same speed.

Guaranteed availability and being able to leave stuff in the vehicle would be the main draws. Even privately owned, they'll still have subscription fees.

I live in the city and as much as I'd like to be car free waymo doesn't do it (yet). I take frequent weekend trips that travel (I assume) outside of waymos range. Once waymo supports car rentals I could consider getting rid of mine.

I would hope so, but it's not yet clear if the economics pan out for large scale deployment. The ride is amazing, but the sensor-laden cars are also very expensive.

The only sensible aspect of Elon's boneheaded move to remove non-camera sensors from Tesla models is the drive to reduce costs, because low costs are essential for mass adoption. Yes, sensors are rapidly dropping in cost, making the move even more boneheaded, but the theory is sound.

Some Waymo exec claimed that they are seeing very encouraging unit economics, which gives me hope for mass diffusion, but we'll only know when the rubber actually hits the road (heheheh).

LiDAR is actually quite cheap now.

I wonder how they will impact traffic. Rideshare has already added traffic according to some studies I've read.

Basically, instead of someone going from point A (current location with own car nearby) to point B (destination), Point A becomes the destination of the previous passenger, and point B and C were the previous points A and B. So a single trip adds one more leg.

It might reduce the need for parking... potentially. But there will still need to be a certain amount of time dedicated to charging for these cars that requires parking.

If private car ownership continues increasing in cost, and households become increasingly cost burdened (transportation is already the second highest cost for households), then I wonder how this will impact demand for housing in areas dependent on cars.

Curious on the outcomes here. I think the best thing we can do for city transportation is increasing the number of viable transportation options. Waymo is one option amongst the options dependent on roads, but walking, biking, and transit should still be a priority so that we maintain competition amongst transportation modes.

Parking for charging can be done en masse though. For example, waymo could have a single large charging facility somewhere out-of-the-way. Small price to pay in my opinion.

The parking gains are huge though. As adoption increases, parking demand for shopping centers, apartments, workplaces, etc. should all decrease. Say hello to higher density cities. Although I imagine it will take quite a while (decades) for these pressures to have a real effect.

Yeah I imagine it will be many decades. Simply because minimum parking requirements would have to be removed (which is unpopular in a lot of cities), and then redevelopment would need to take place based on demand and investment potential.

I forsee the cost of travel increasing quite a lot.

Private cars will end up 2nd class citizens with 'waymo lanes' and sky high insurance costs, pushing everyone to self driving taxi services who have a really high cost per mile compared to your own car, since they have a huge debt to pay back to investors so will never get down to the $0.15 per mile that driving your own old car costs.

On the other hand, insurance costs for robotaxis should be lower if they are able to drive significantly safer.

Then the one I'm more interested / excited for: optimizing the fleet for the cargo. If most trips involve single passengers, then most cars can be small electric single seaters. This can further reduce insurance costs as well as fuel, maintenance and depreciation.

I'd hope that's enough to offset the price of the sensors, compute hardware, and engineers to maintain the system.

But yes paying back investors; not sure how long that would lead to elevated costs for riders.

If the cars are commodity, wouldn't someone make a ton of money by making a cheaper/better model and undercutting?

Seems implausible but then there are examples like deepseek.

If only they could be sold in the US

https://insideevs.com/news/710364/byd-detroit-import-seagull...

I definitely see a future where global transportation is powered by driverless Chinese EVs, except the US, which has driverless cars that are worse and 6x more expensive.

[delayed]

Waymos are prevalent in LA.

The US would benefit much more from a good railroad system.

Everybody can drive a car. They have solved the wrong problem.

> They have solved the wrong problem.

Human drivers kill >30K/year.

So displace human drivers with public transportation?

Precisely, Waymo is a form of public transportation.

Buses driven by a robot are cheap public transportation.

I've heard this argument a lot, but is the bus driver really more than a rounding error on the balance sheet of the transportation company? I have no experience in this field, but I would imagine the infrastructure for buying and maintaining a fleet of busses, creating a route network, dealing with ticketing, dealing with disruptions, etc, etc, makes up most of the costs around running a public transport company?

I think the benefit to transportation companies would not just be about salaries, but also about predictability in staffing. I've experienced a few times in the past that a strong flu season causes specific bus lines to be serviced with reduced frequency due to staffing shortages.

But concretely, regarding the staffing costs, if I roughly read the financial report section correctly, it looks like for the Berlin transport agency, salaries make up half of all expenses[0]!

Given that that's such a big portion, I think autonomous buses could likely unlock a lot of mobility in big cities by having more flexibility in creation of additional bus routes (as you don't have to consolidate multiple routes into one because you have to pay drivers for each).

[0]: https://www.bvg.de/dam/jcr:67ef63fc-3fd1-4e95-aae6-2ab8c8c2b...

> is the bus driver really more than a rounding error on the balance sheet of the transportation company?

Yes. For my suburban bus system, about 30% of the total budget (operating AND capital) goes to drivers (and related support like HR, managers, etc.).

> Everybody can drive a car.

Not everyone can/wants to own a car, though.

Trains do not solve the same issue as Waymo/Rideshares/Taxis. For example, if I want to go from SF to somewhere in the East Bay, I would walk to my nearest bus stop, ride the bus to the train station, then hop on a train to Berkeley. But now I'm a couple miles from my friends' house. Relatively few people want to go to my friends' house each day, so it doesn't make sense to put a train station there. Maybe there should be a bus stop, but if everyone there owns cars anyway, the city might have other priorities. But I, the dude visiting, don't have a car. So I hire a cab/Uber/Waymo to bring me the last couple miles.

Yeah I agree. I'm very pro public transit -- I live in NYC and didn't get my license until my 40s -- but there is absolutely a need for last mile connections once you leave transit dense parts of a city. Or the occasional errand that requires hauling some stuff around. Or a number of other reasons you'd need a car a couple times a month.

The reality is we decided to invest mainly in car infrastructure for the past 100 years and it's going to take a long time to fix that. In the meantime, I'll be happy with an automated car and diminishing car ownership.

Funny enough, Miami is one of the few US cities that does have a pretty large rail system. There are several types of rail and it is fairly fast and effective. You can even take the Silver Meteor to NYC with an average speed of 51 mph. That's a better average speed than many European lines over a similar 1400 mile distance. Compare: Brussels-Athens 41mph avg, Stockholm-Paris 54mph avg, Amsterdam-Lisbon 47mph. The fastest EU route over that distance is probably Berlin-Madrid at 65mph, and the Amtrak is cheaper, has no changes, and is usually more comfortable than any of those.

If you want (relatively) high speed, you can take the Brightline to Orlando, 236 mi in 3.5h aka 67 mph average. That's on par with Brussels-Amsterdam (68mph), Amsterdam-Paris (80mph), but indeed far below the marquee EU/Chinese/Japanese HSR routes of 150+ mph average speed.

More generally: large parts of the eastern US had a developed railroad system (and often still do, for freight.) You can look up old maps and see how widespread they were. The economics mostly just didn't work out because as car ownership rose, the population density wasn't high enough to justify them over cars.

I'm thinking that as prevalence of self-driving cars increases, demand for trains is going to increase. People will quickly start to enjoy not needing to drive, and flying sucks. It's a lot of investment up front, but trains become an obvious cash cow. Not to mention if you can pair it with real-estate deals at stations.

> Everybody can drive a car.

I can't.

Disagree. Sufficient robotic cars will essentially act like trains and will drop you off to your door.

Still can't believe the prices are comparable to Uber, sometimes costing even more. It should be significantly less to the point it drives Uber out of business. Is Waymo close to bankruptcy, unable to be profitable, or are they just greedy?

The cars are extremely expensive and they have a 100 billion investment to recoup. I assume they are still losing money on each ride.

> The cars are extremely expensive

Compared to what? Most estimates put costs around $150K/vehicle and dropping.

The $125k difference between that and a "uber quality" used car buys a lot of labor.

Yes, labor can be shockingly cheap, especially if it's gig labor. You need A LOT of labor to outrun the capital investment.

And this is why Tesla will steamroll them in time. That and their cars are far more adaptable.

Tesla won't achieve true safe autonomy without a significant change in strategy.

Source: I worked in AV V&V for a decade.

the people competitive in this space - your Waymo's, the Chinese auto co's (banned in the US), Mercedes | GM (won't do this as it cuts into their main profit lines) - so that will only leave Waymo as the only player in automated ride hailing

Tesla is just making noise as usual.

Only if Tesla is able to roll out a competing service. Given that they have zero cars without a safety driver on public roads, I’d say they’re a very long way from doing so, and I have my doubts about their ability to do so at all. Their CEO talks big but doesn’t deliver.

Waymo can easily charge a premium for not having a driver in the seat. Privacy and physical security guaranteed? Also not dealing with the moral implications of what the driver is receiving in terms of compensation (or in the case of uber, not).

They're, in my customer impression, quite a world different.

I assume that's simply a calculation they do of how much their revenue will change if they adjust the prices up or down. Until it makes financial sense to lower prices, they can wait on trying to capture the market. I would guess they're working on making the cars and equipment cheaper before massively scaling up.

Having feared death in a Uber one too many times, I would definitely pay a premium over Uber for a waymo.

> It should be significantly less to the point it drives Uber out of business.

Prices are rarely based on cost, and more often based on what a customer is willing to pay. Waymo is a better experience than Uber (predictable, safe, clean, quiet, etc.), so it makes sense people would be willing to pay more.

> Is Waymo close to bankruptcy, unable to be profitable, or are they just greedy?

No x 3

Are there indications that Waymo vehicles are sitting around idle? If so, then yes, they should reduce the price to attract customers. If they are essentially running at capacity with their current prices, why wouldn't they charge more? For the novelty, etc..

Yes, they spend a large amount of time idle.

    Examining the cumulative hours waiting over time, it is a bit staggering just how much time Waymos are spending without a passenger or even assigned to pick one up. Peaking in March 2025 with over 304,000 hours, the California Waymo vehicle fleet is spending the equivalent of 12,700 days every month operational but without an assigned passenger trip.

    If we assume 1,000 Waymos were deployed for public rides during this period (on the conservative side given recent fleet announcements), that ends up being around 12.7 days2 of waiting per vehicle per month. Further, the bias here is to be forgiving, as Waymos are not operational 24 hours a day.

https://www.thedriverlessdigest.com/p/how-waymo-spends-its-t...

What percent are idle at peak times?

Waymo is annoying only _available_ through Uber in some cities - notably Austin. Even more annoyingly, you can't choose whether you want to accept human drivers or just Waymo vehicles.

This is like the argument that ebooks should cost less than paper books.

Not that I disagree but it's never gonna happen. more money > money

Waymo is such an interesting case study. For most other ~AI deployments you have strong public reaction to the proliferation of slop, non-human failure modes, cost cutting at the expense of quality, etc. But I haven't met a single person who doesn't like the experience of Waymo. They ended up cracking the code on what I suspect people really want:

- consistent car quality

- safety of the drive (conservative driving and potential fear of drivers)

- no randomly chatty driver

All of those feel like a breath of fresh air especially when stacked up against the current state of Uber & Lyft rides. People really just want consistency. I don't actually think you needed AI to get there (I've had occasional rides in black cars that provided the same experience). Waymo was just right time, right place, right price.

There's a lot of complaints about externalities, especially when a power cut stopped all the vehicles in a city recently.

I'm not commenting on the externalities. For that I'd also cite economic impact, job loss, occasional emergency services issues, etc. I'm saying the experience when you yourself are taking a ride. I haven't met a single person who's said "this sucked - I'm going back to Uber".

I think parent was talking about how users of the service were very satisfied with it, not about externalities.

My first and only Waymo ride was super sketch. Car slowed down to ~5mph in a 35mph zone and stayed that way for 5+ minutes as other cars were swerving around us. Felt like it was going to come to a complete stop in the middle of the road, I prefer real humans.

not having to talk to the driver and picking my own music are my fav parts. the novelty wears off quick and it becomes normal

> but I haven't met a single person who doesn't like the experience of Waymo.

Just last week a Waymo was driving on train tracks and the rider had to jump out of the car and run because the car stopped while trains came at it. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26KJvL2clTs) I bet that guy'd have something to say about the experience.

Yeah that's obviously not great but that video is nothing like what you described. You made it sound like it drove onto a mainline train track with a train barreling down the tracks that couldn't stop with the guy diving out of the car to avoid getting clobbered. It did not, it got stuck on a tram track. Not quite the same thing.

Tried calling it and it left without picking us up.

What you're getting at is basically the difference between probabilistic models vs deterministic ones.

waymo is also a probabilistic deep learning system

I've had Waymos in SF take very strange routes. It seemed to really strongly avoid ever using Market St, generally preferring a long right-angle route over the perfect hypotenuse. Sometimes this delayed me very considerably, doubling my ride time compared to the Google Maps estimated time.

That said, I've never felt unsafe or uncomfortable. But I have jumped out halfway through the ride and grabbed an eScooter instead.

Back when I had to drive/walk in SF, I would also go quite out of my way to avoid market or mission. Especially near 6th. Self-preservation and whatnot...

Market used to be closed to all cars (2021-2025); only taxis and busses were allowed but that changed recently:

https://www.sfmta.com/blog/creating-better-market-street-car... https://www.planetizen.com/news/2025/08/135849-sfs-market-st...

Wonder if that explains your observed preference. I'd bet Waymos will start utilizing the route again if it aligns with Google's mapping algo.

Why would I use Waymo if an Uber/Lyft costs the same?

If it gets in an accident, who pays my medical bills?

For the latter question, ask your insurance company. I'd be surprised if they care specifically that waymo was involved. If you don't have insurance, ask a lawyer what your options would be in that situation.

> Why would I use Waymo if an Uber/Lyft costs the same?

Safe, clean, quiet, private, predictable, no tipping, etc.

Clean? I took a waymo in SF a few weeks ago that smelled extremely strongly of cologne or perfume and I almost couldn't breathe.

I've also been in one with like hair and stuff on the seats and door.

It's not like humans don't still ride in those cars.

in a waymo there are fewer parties involved. this should make you feel more confident in getting the bill paid, and knowing who will pay it

That first question is wild to me. Having to share a space with a questionably vetted stranger is one of the primary downsides to rideshare apps. Privacy and comfort are huge bonuses.

>Privacy

Waymo cameras permanently record everything that happens in their vehicles, right?

Different models of privacy. I don't really care if faceless corpo knows I spent hours the other day spewing fire from both ends because I finally met my match in spicy foods, but it's a somewhat uncomfortable topic to discuss in front of some strange dude sitting in the car.

that's a little weird since the driver will forget about it quite fast but the recordings could be stored forever and tied to you personally.

Many rideshare drivers have internal cameras and no restrictions on what they do with the recordings.

> Having to share a space with a questionably vetted stranger is one of the primary downsides to rideshare apps.

Some people see this as an upside. Not me, not you, but these people exist.

I can't make up my mind if you meant this the other way around? If you meant as stated, I'm genuinely curious why you would rather take and uber/lyft vs a (seemingly much safer and more pleasant) waymo?

Funny that they apparently didn't include South Beach, at least according to the map.

miami beach is a different city = different laws and regulations

I’m going to Miami next week. Time for my first WayMo ride.

Weirdly (well not for me it's a charter metal festival cruise) I am too and interested in doing the same. Typically we use Uber and it's been a not great experience.

The competition is growing.

Dont let your cats outside.

RIP KitKat :(

I work at Alphabet and I think it’s sad that KitKat died

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