My guess is that once Waymo starts to extremely take off, law makers in various cities will start to pass laws to ban them or the number of regulations will make it impossible to run at a profit. This will almost certainly happen. It will disproportionately impact an entire segment of the population and will put them out of work.
You think the folks on City Council enjoy chauffeuring their own children around and will block a solution to it?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Minneapolis/comments/1pdzd2f/some_m...
> The bill prohibits the use of autonomous vehicles as motor carriers of passengers or property without a human operator who (i) meets any state and federal qualifications for the operation of an autonomous vehicle; (ii) is physically present in such autonomous vehicle; and (iii) has the ability to monitor the performance of such vehicle and intervene in the operation of such vehicle, including operating such vehicle without the use of the automated driving system and stopping and turning off such vehicle if necessary.
It seems that many people, after trying out the service for themselves first hand, in a locale that has it available today, are very eager to have the service available to them in their home locale.
If NJ consumers (and politicians) had a 10x better product dangled in front of them every day, then the regulation side would solve itself.
Waymo is truly just such a vastly superior product that consumers will get exposed enough to it to care, and when they care, they will solve the regulation side.
Uber and Lyft will survive exactly to the extent they successfully adopt self-driving.
I think this is correct and I want to point out something that I have not seen mentioned elsewhere in the thread.
If and when Uber/Lyft move heavily in this direction, the cost/operational benefits of having their "fleet" of vehicles be privately owned-vehicles will almost certainly disappear.
I will take whichever one is cheaper. Just like now I open up both uber and lyft to see which costs less, I'll open up waymo as well
I don't hate Uber/Lyft (though many in NYC are legitimately horrible, just like taxis)
Waymo is simply an order of magnitude better than the best Uber ride I've ever had
Mamdani, the new nyc mayor, has been a long time friend and advocate for NYC taxi workers alliance. He even participated in a hunger strike with them in 2021.
Waymo is right now starting the wheels turning on getting NYC permits, but taxi workers have already made their (obvious) stance clear: No Waymos.
No they won’t. And Waymo’s playbook would be Uber’s if they did: preëmpt at the state and federal levels.