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Comment by RivieraKid | Hacker News Reader

This is a business with winner-take-all characteristics. Cruise was unlikely to leapfrog Waymo. So it makes the case for continuing to throw money at this very unconvincing.

Cruise was always destined to be "like Waymo, but worse". Tesla, on the other hand, is taking a very different path than Waymo, they have a chance at beating Waymo at their own game and even if they don't beat Waymo, they can be a winner in some specific niche. (For the record, I'm a fan of Waymo.)

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What, why? There's no winner-take-all aspect to shuttling people around. Taxi service is a commodity and taxis-without-drivers will also be a commodity. The switching costs for users are essentially zero.

That's how we get Uber, Lyft, DiDi, Grab, Bolt, WeRide, BlackWolf...

I don't know how you can write that list and come to the conclusion that it's not winner-take-all. In their home market (US), Uber is ~75%, Lyft is ~25%, and all other competitors are sub-1% combined. Didi is similarly dominant in China, and so on. "Completely different markets have different winners taking it all" does not counteract the claim of winner-takes-all in any way, nor does listing utterly insignificant players like BlackWolf. Do you think people saying "winner-takes-all" in business contexts mean one company with literally 100% marketshare globally?

People who drive their own cars are larger than all. You can find single markets where those people are more than all combined world wide.

I think there is probably a healthy subset of people on here who take Uber etc. all the time. I, on the other hand, maybe take it a half-dozen times a year (plus some private cars to the airport).

I'd love a really good driver assistive system for my car (ala FSD today) but I likely wouldn't actually get driven around a lot more unless the economics were more compelling than seem likely anytime soon.

For most people the economics won't every work out. Uber/Taxis make sense if you only need them a few times per year. However even if the driver is free, if you are using your car daily as most people do it won't work out.

People who yell "share" forget that most people are driving during rush hour, and so the car will be idle the rest of the day anyway. As such there isn't that much money to save by sharing a car.

In my observation, some cities that have "OK" public transit, people can make-do without cars if they Uber, Zipcar, traditional rentals, walk, and use transit. I also observe that it involves a lot of juggling and probably not regular well-outside-of-town trips.

Absent driving yourself at all, you're going to be very limited most places. Which may be OK for continuing a college lifestyle but mostly doesn't work unless you have a partner who handles the driving.

Try to raise prices and see how fast those regional "monopolies" evaporate. MoviePass was the winner in the "unlimited movie tickets" subscription space.

But Waymo or their competitors are not in the "shuttling people around" business. They're developing a driver. Robotaxi is one of the applications.

The winner-takes-all aspect comes from economies of scale for example. If Waymo is several years ahead and has better economics, how can Cruise catch up? They will have lower cost of capital. Top people will want to work at Waymo rather than Cruise. It will be hard to close the R&D gap. When Cruise is where Waymo is today, Waymo will already have a lightweight package that will be used by Ford, VW or Toyota and capable to drive everywhere in any weather conditions.

What path is that? Their self driving took a huge step back when they dropped Mobileye and honestly I don't think it's been the same since.

1. Leveraging data collected from Tesla owners. In theory, they have the data to learn the driving behavior from almost everywhere in the world.

2. Going directly for vision-only, no geofence system. Waymo's strategy has been to start with a proof-of concept and gradually expand geography and capabilities.

Tesla has already done a geofenced system in Austin (in the shape of a penis). It went poorly.

For national security reasons, several other countries won't allow Waymo (or Tesla or any other US company) to "win" in their territory. This will ensure that at least a couple other competitors remain worldwide regardless of whether it makes sense in purely economic terms.

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