The last time I was in SF I used Waymo to get around town and Uber to get to the airport.
The Waymo rides were near-perfect. At one point when a delivery truck was blocking 3 lanes, the vehicle assertively merged over into the free lane to get around. A couple of people on e-bikes were all over the place, but at no point did I feel that the vehicle put them in any kind of danger. Starts, stops, and turns were all smooth. End-to-end time was good, the ride itself was comfortable, and the price was reasonable.
On the other hand the Uber driver picked me up in a Tesla that had regen cranked up. They continually accelerated and decelerated the entire way to the airport, rocking the car back and forth the whole time, as if it were a nervous habit to continually press and release the accelerator or something. I felt sick by the time we got to my terminal.
For me at this point, technology like Waymo can't carpet every metropolitan area quickly enough.
One caveat: I should be able to use it (and, hence, pay for it) anonymously.
scosman · 2h ago
I’d like to use it anonymously too but it doesn’t feel reasonable to ask for access to a $80k piece of hardware anonymously. I needed to give ID to rent a movie at blockbuster.
lostlogin · 1h ago
I’ve been trying to think of other expensive things you can do anonymously.
Busses aren’t cheap, but have a driver.
You can ride a plane (national only) here in NZ with no ID check. There is a name on the ticket, but no one checks it matches the passenger. Plenty of staff and other passengers around too.
cpard · 2h ago
You hit an important point here.
Waymo is offering a very consistent experience, from the car that is used to the driving behavior.
Taxi services in the past, at least where I grew up, were kind of enforcing a more consistent experience by having requirements about the car and even the color.
But the driving experience was always highly variable and is getting solved by self driving cars.
With uber and Lyft you as the customer gave away some of the experience elements with the promise of cheaper and more abundant transportation.
But the experience has gone so bad, that getting into a Waymo feels so refreshing.
Animats · 2h ago
> One caveat: I should be able to use it (and, hence, pay for it) anonymously.
That it requires a Google account is worth taking up with the TCP. That's a tie-in sale.
autobodie · 2h ago
The TCP?
Animats · 2h ago
The part of the California Public Utilities Commission that regulates private buses and ride-sharing.[1]
They’re probably comparing to taxis, where you can pay in cash.
autobodie · 2h ago
> One caveat: I should be able to use it (and, hence, pay for it) anonymously.
I assume you mean this as a moral claim and I can agree in that case. However, it's meaningless of course and kind of infuriating in any other light, because this is the world everyone has been mindlessly begging for and there is no chance that it comes without extremely severe consequences. An automated world like this means even less power for working people than ever before, so how on Earth do you expect to realize any of these desires? Do you still think capitalists care about your privacy? Even if they did "care" it wouldn't matter because they have to compete.
zdragnar · 2h ago
> Do you still think capitalists care about your privacy?
Why do you think most people did in the first place? We (speaking for the majority of consumers) care more about free services than we do having our privacy protected.
The fact that there are a seemingly endless stream of cases of identity fraud and leaks of private data and we still continue to use all the services indicates that we don't value it very much.
Do I care that Google knows I went to Amazon after searching for a particular book title? Nope. Do I care that Google knows I went to the grocery store today? Still no. I would much rather get a great search engine, free maps, GPS, email, documents, storage, photo backups and more.
If I did care about the privacy of these things, I'd pay for it. Or, I'd use a dedicated account on a different service on a different device that can't be connected if I want to do something I don't want others knowing about, like buying naughty lingerie for my partner or something.
autobodie · 1h ago
Nonsense. You describe a world in which everyone has disposable income to navigate the market, picking and choosing as they please. Capitalism is not that world. Most people are just trying to keep their debt manageable enough to keep a roof over their heads and get to work on time the next day. Get real, guy.
gonzalohm · 3h ago
The other day I decided to compare Uber and Waymo. I ordered a Waymo and it was slightly annoyed because it took 5 minutes to do a left turn and almost went into the wrong way.
On the way back I ordered an Uber, one driver cancelled the drive, the other started driving in the other direction, possibly using multiple car sharing apps and finishing another ride.
I ended up cancelling and requesting a Waymo. It may not be perfect but at least it comes when requested
jjice · 3h ago
I'm in the North East, so I've never used a Waymo, but I swear the last two or so years of ride share of sucked. I mostly take it to and from the airport, but I have about a 50% likelihood of my Uber drive getting either racist, preachy about religion, or taking a wrong turn that ends up tacking on another ten minutes. Usually those come in sets. I used to really like some pleasant small talk or a silent ride (whatever the driver leaned towards), but it's awful in my city now.
Just a month ago my Lyft driver said that God was telling him that the girl he was seeing was a whore because she said he should seek alcohol counseling.
Like six months ago my Uber driver (out of nowhere) said that the driver next to us on the highway (an Audi driving completely normally) must sell drugs to be able to afford a car that nice. The Audi driver was a black man.
When I'm out of town, that rate feels like it decreases though.
That all said, I'd take a Waymo in a heartbeat.
baxtr · 3h ago
> I’d take a Waymo in a heartbeat.
On a personal level I fully understand that.
On a societal level I’d say, maybe it’s helpful not to be completely segregated from a certain social class that seems to exist in your town and to be exposed to them, albeit briefly during a cab ride.
ryandrake · 1h ago
I don't think this is a social class issue, it's an issue where society is failing to address widespread anti social behavior and mental illness. We've kind of given up and just accepted racism, anger, belligerence, and all kinds of mental illnesses as inevitable societal land mines that normal people have to tiptoe around. And now that they're unchecked, they're taking over. I can't remember any time in my life where we've had so many people just out there living their lives, in desperate need of help.
rangestransform · 3h ago
On a societal level, I think more “normal people” would take public transit if they could guarantee the removal of homeless people and people behaving antisocially
autobodie · 2h ago
That would require everyone having a stable job. Something to think about.
hexis · 1h ago
No, it would require removing homeless or antisocial people from public transportation.
lostlogin · 1h ago
And function social welfare with healthcare, mental health care, housing and education provision.
dcrazy · 2h ago
It’s not an issue of social class. It’s an issue of the gig economy being a race to the bottom that cannot afford (legally or monetarily) to hold workers to professional standards.
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
> an issue of the gig economy being a race to the bottom that cannot afford (legally or monetarily) to hold workers to professional standards
They absolutely can. Uber just prizes availability above service while Lyft perplexingly fails to differentiate itself. To the extent Waymo is cracking the market, it’s not by being an AV provider. It’s by being higher quality.
New York had Juno and then Revel that similarly targeted quality. The former was bought by Uber and ruined. The latter switched from employed drivers to a gig model.
noAnswer · 1h ago
lol. Remember when Uber was cracking the market? Taxis where bad bad. Uber was cool cool. One "monopoly" got exchanged for another. Now Waymo is cool cool. In 10 years or so Waymo will be bad because they will play loud ads or some shit.
JumpCrisscross · 40m ago
> Remember when Uber was cracking the market? Taxis were bad bad. Uber was cool cool
Yes. My Brown-educated perpetually suit-wearing black roommate couldn’t get a hail on 5th Avenue and the credit-card machines never worked.
hbsbsbsndk · 2h ago
Oh no, where will I possibly find weird racist xenophobic takes if not during my taxi ride? It's too bad there's not a million social media sites where I could be exposed to them
No comments yet
morkalork · 1h ago
Ah so sounds like the average cab driver experience. Uber has been one long and consistent regression towards the mean in that sense. I did get a good chuckle out of the taxi I saw recently with the "Do you follow Jesus this closely?" bumper sticker at least.
iwontberude · 3h ago
Several times I have ordered Uber Black early in the morning and watched as the driver clearly was leaving their house and walking out to their vehicle taking a nice 5+ minutes -- somewhat frustrating. You can't even spend your way out of the problem on Uber.
ENGNR · 30m ago
As a non US resident - not having to think about tipping the driver makes me excited and significantly more likely to visit. Tipping culture is just exhausting!
If someone could automate wheeling the food a few dozen metres from a restaurant kitchen to a table next it would be perfect :)
majormajor · 2h ago
When Uber came out you often got nicer cars in nicer condition than cabs for less money. Funny that the condition thing has turned on them.
I don't have a strong opinion yet on the long-term viability of Waymo (or any other competitor) because I think we need to see two things:
* what will the cars look like in 3 years? 5?
* will autonomous tech and supporting infra (like cheap automated parking in sparse parts of cities for cars to stay when not in use) make its way into consumer products at a low enough price point, leading to heavy Waymo users turning into vehicle owners instead? This was one of the issues with the scooter/e-bike rental market.
muglug · 3h ago
Lyft seems to have suffered more (proportionately) from Waymo than Uber in SF.
I bet that’s a reflection of a large “anyone-but-Uber” contingent stemming from the Travis Kalanick days.
culopatin · 2h ago
Because Lyft is an afterthought. Uber is a verb
Uehreka · 2h ago
I don’t know about that. Me and everyone I know use Uber as a verb but then always order from Lyft. I used to do it for the political reasons, but at this point it’s mostly just muscle memory. When I do open the Uber app the prices are usually equivalent.
ryandrake · 1h ago
I deliberately default to Lyft because of the "Travis Kalanick days." I don't even know if Uber are a terrible, shitty company anymore, but they once were, and that permanently changed my behavior. I'll probably never buy a Tesla for the same reason.
iwontberude · 2h ago
Uber is a prefixal adjective or adverb
vntok · 1h ago
Languages evolve. People have been using it as a verb a lot, so it's become a verb.
jaredhallen · 3h ago
I was in SF yesterday and wanted to try out a Waymo, but apparently they're not operating right now.
azinman2 · 2h ago
Wow, must be because of the protests. It’s so bad that people take out their aggression for the president on Waymo of all things.
No comments yet
ryandrake · 1h ago
I wanted to try out Waymo, but their app won't run on my phone which is limited to iOS 15.
moomoo11 · 2h ago
Waymo is the first tech product/service I’ve used in the last decade that actually blew my mind.
The last time was when I could take photos on my phone that were as good enough as lugging around a Dslr.
There have been good products and services in between don’t get me wrong. But none of them instantly blew me away like those.
standardUser · 3h ago
> But on an economic level, a subset of blue-collar workers (which numbers in the tens of thousands in San Francisco) would find themselves either regionally displaced or outright vocationally exterminated by a branch of artificial intelligence.
A lot to unpack there, but it does act as a reminder that most people have been highly critical of the rideshare business model, considering these jobs to be profoundly unfair an unsustainable for drivers. So it comes off as disingenuous to hear claims that we're going to lose an important working class profession. No, we're going to lose a profession that, outside of the densest cities, never made economic sense in the 21st century. It's a profession we want to see disappear. Not that it entirely matters considering that consumers are inevitably going to choose the cheaper, safer option regardless of which jobs may be at stake.
levocardia · 2h ago
>It's a profession we want to see disappear
Really? Next time you take an Uber, ask your driver how much they'd like it if they abruptly lost their job. Nobody is forcing people to drive Uber, unemployment is incredibly low, it's not like there aren't other opportunities. Some people actively value being able to set their own hours and not constantly have a boss breathing down their neck.
ryandrake · 1h ago
Doesn't the "Uber Driver App" become the boss breathing down their necks, anyway? Maybe I'm wrong, but I always thought that if the driver doesn't meet performance goals or doesn't take enough passengers, or satisfy a litany of other metrics, they drop them...
somewhereoutth · 3h ago
The crazy thing about ridesharing and similar, is that the workers are providing the capital (the cars), but the company is making the profits!
readthenotes1 · 3h ago
It is also a profession that doesn't make sense in the densest of cities. There's too much car traffic, and too many square meters allocated to undersupply it.
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
> a profession that doesn't make sense in the densest of cities. There's too much car traffic, and too many square meters allocated to undersupply it
Street-side parking in downtown areas is far more wasteful than ridesharing cars.
lvl155 · 1h ago
Wait till people start getting into accidents in these robotaxis. It’s already a complete disaster for Uber. Do you know what it takes to get coverage as a passenger if your Uber driver is an idiot? With current administration going the wild wild west route to complete deregulation, robotaxis will be very rough.
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> Do you know what it takes to get coverage as a passenger if your Uber driver is an idiot?
Coverage as a passenger? For what?
lvl155 · 1h ago
> accidents
JumpCrisscross · 58m ago
Why do you think Waymo works differently from all other cases of physical injury liability?
Spivak · 1h ago
If you are riding in a Lyft and get hurt (and the Lyft is at fault), it's Lyft's medical insurance company that pays out for your medical care. Same as it is for all other auto insurance.
It's a pretty delayed process because unless the Lyft hit a tree there's usually at least two vehicles involved in the crash and the insurance companies have to fight over fault. But they do eventually pay out.
Source: Got into an accident in a Lyft. They even paid my salary for the few days I was off work.
lvl155 · 1h ago
That’s what people assume. It’s not.
aeronaut80 · 1h ago
Could you explain and provide more details?
lvl155 · 53m ago
For example, if you get into an accident in NYC, you’re pretty much screwed. Uber will not cover you and you have to rely on “bankrupt” commercial insurance. Which is funny because Uber fees INCLUDE these phantom coverages. Class-action waiting to happen.
JumpCrisscross · 45m ago
> if you get into an accident in NYC, you’re pretty much screwed. Uber will not cover you and you have to rely on “bankrupt” commercial insurance
What is your source on TLC commercial insurance not paying out for medical expenses sustained in an accident?
And going back to Waymo, wouldn’t having one of the world’s wealthiest companies as the beneficial counterparty solve the problem you’re raising?
lvl155 · 31m ago
Aren’t you PE? Just look up the lawsuits bro. On a serious note, I don’t think Google or Tesla will take on that liability once we get to scale. That basically defeats the purpose of autonomous. Their legal and ops team will do everything to push an alternate business model similar to lease. This is why I really think autonomous has to be at least two orders of magnitude “safer” to be viable at scale (more than 10% on the road).
ChrisArchitect · 2h ago
Related:
Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway
Why is Uber's price not affected by Waymo is a puzzle to me.
I use Waymo's all the time. There are still some quirks they need to figure out and polish the experience, but it really is happening and it appears that Uber's head is in the sands or I'm missing something here.
mft_ · 3h ago
Scalability? Waymo is operating in a handful of carefully chosen US cities. Uber can probably open in any city in the world (within reason) with probably a few weeks' effort.
I agree with your underlying premise that in the (very) long term, all taxis will be automated; I guess the gamble for investors is how long that transition takes, across the globe.
fasthands9 · 3h ago
I wouldn't touch Uber stock, but the PE ratio is only 15. My guess is the market is expecting them to be able to still grow in the next few years even if they eventually face tough competition.
I think there's also the fact that if self-driving cars take off and price goes down, people will ultimately rely on taxis/delivery more than ever. Maybe there is a place for Uber to be the platform for that still, maybe not.
israrkhan · 3h ago
Uber also has a delivery business. Uber Eats and Uber direct.
username223 · 2h ago
> Waymo is operating in a handful of carefully chosen US cities. Uber can probably open in any city in the world (within reason) with probably a few weeks' effort.
This. Uber can operate anywhere that has human drivers and cell service. Waymo needs (I think) high-precision maps that are frequently updated, and simple traffic behavior.
Traffic in Lima looks like absolute chaos to an American, with endless honking and lane markers treated as vague suggestions, but there are not constant crashes, because the (mostly professional) drivers know the local conventions and communicate with each other by horn, eye contact, hand signal, etc. Huaraz is full of blind 4-way intersections with no stop signs, so drivers honk as they get close to one, and there is a remarkable lack of fiery death.
Waymo can't work in most places until it either changes human driving, or achieves AGI. Uber works as soon as it can pay local drivers.
actinium226 · 2h ago
So you're saying Waymo can't scale because traffic in Lima is chaotic? That feels like saying cars won't scale because many rural villages don't have roads smooth enough for cars, and that horses can deal with that problem just fine.
username223 · 1h ago
Yes and no. If you think Lima is a "rural village," you need to get out more, or at least check Wikipedia. It's a city of 10+ million people that doesn't follow American traffic laws, and there are plenty more like Huaraz (100,000+) where I can catch a human-driven taxi right now.
I'm saying a Jaguar I-Pace with lidar that knows how to follow lines and a high-res map isn't suitable for a lot of the world's roads. And how it will "scale" to what a taxi can handle right now isn't at all obvious.
standardUser · 3h ago
Waymo and Uber have partnerships in some cities, like Phoenix, where you can only order a Waymo through the Uber app. So they don't view each other only as competitors, though I have no clue what Uber's thinking long-term.
emilsedgh · 3h ago
I've heard this argument again but just because you can hail a Waymo through Uber doesn't mean Uber can continue as-is. In a world where Uber is just the app, Uber's margins would be extremely thin and it wouldn't justify the market price it has now.
Also, why would Waymo, in the long term, use Uber for this?
They have the car, the driver, the app/software. They are not gonna share a big chunk of the profit with Uber in long term. The current partnership is probably just a tactical thing for both, not a strategic one.
kilimounjaro · 3h ago
I always assumed waymo would immediately kill uber, but really the likelihood is that there will be multiple self driving companies as well as human drivers in markets. A big city may need 2000 waymos most of the time, but 5000 waymos on a saturday night or when a big game is on. Google can either build 2.5x as many as they need, or they can keep other operators in the market to make the service more functional during peak times. It is likely that other operators will bring cars to market, and a unified app with different self driving providers will bring better service than any individual provider.
dotancohen · 2h ago
Waymo could develop some type of modular docker-type container that would significantly fill the interior of their vehicles, or maybe even replace the interior of their vehicles. So equipped, a Waymo vehicle could be used to deliver supplies and stock to small businesses throughout the city throughout the week. Think small chains such as convenience stores, they could lower the per-store inventory and refill from remote, cheaper-rent areas, if they had three Waymo deliveries during the work day.
Those vehicles would then be fitted with the human interiors for the high demand periods you state.
tsimionescu · 2h ago
If the businesses are reliant on the special deliveries, then you can't re-purpose them as you need more cars for people.
dotancohen · 1h ago
The idea would be that the deliveries happen during the day working hours, yet the people moving happens during the night hours. As implied by GP.
AlotOfReading · 3h ago
There could be a stable long term arrangement between Waymo and Uber. Think of the relationship between Nvidia and OEMs, where Nvidia gets all of the margin and only has to deal with B2B bulk orders that they can redirect at any time, while the OEM has to deal with all the expensive customer support, returns, recalls, and other annoying aspects of retail.
It's not a future where Uber is a viable company though.
brookst · 3h ago
Perhaps. Or it may be that Uber sees its long term future as lead gen and management for people/goods transportation, and Waymo sees itself as fulfillment of those.
Uber has tremendous brand recognition and marketing in ways that Google has never been good at. I don’t think it’s the most likely outcome, but I would not be shocked to see Uber take an minority ownership stake in Waymo, use it as the preferred self-driving option, and phase out human drivers in many areas over the next 10 years.
tracerbulletx · 2h ago
The app isn't the important part of that partnership, it's that they're managing and operating the fleets.
iwontberude · 3h ago
Maybe winning a finders fee is more profitable, Uber isn't high margin to begin with.
boulos · 2h ago
Small correction: in Phoenix you can also use the Waymo One app directly. In both Austin and Atlanta though, we are only available via Uber.
dosinga · 2h ago
This is true. Then again Google used to power Yahoo!'s search and then ended up replacing Yahoo! as the default web destination
tonyhb · 3h ago
In the partnership model Waymo charges uber for the ride and Uber charges the customer.
The interesting thing is that uber loses money on every ride. Waymo charges Uber more than Uber charges the customer.
On Uber’s side, though, this is preferable to losing the entire ride. Uber loses much more slowly by controlling the distribution and losing a few dollars per ride than by losing the entire customer base with no revenue from these customers.
darth_avocado · 3h ago
Uber eats and other diversifications. Unlike Lyft, which refused to diversify, which I always thought was a strange choice especially once the pandemic hit, Uber not only the dominant player but also diversified enough where it will most likely still be the #1 player, with the second seat now being Waymo. Based on how Waymo scales from city 1 to city n, it is extremely hard for them to do 100 cities at once. And international expansion will be almost impossible. Uber will still continue to dominate those markets.
AlotOfReading · 3h ago
The thing people miss about Uber is that Waymo doesn't need to scale to 100 cities at once to eviscerate Uber's ride hail business. They need to win the couple dozen largest cities that make up the vast majority of Uber's profits. The rest of the world drives less volume and costs vastly more to service when you account for things like regulatory compliance, internationalization, payments, and support.
nradov · 3h ago
Lyft is slightly diversified with bike rental in a few cities, although that's only a small fraction of their revenue.
bpodgursky · 2h ago
My hesitation to use Uber is rarely about price. It's about the miserable experience of having a driver who cancels or never shows up. Prices bumping up or down 20% doesn't move the needle.
The Waymo rides were near-perfect. At one point when a delivery truck was blocking 3 lanes, the vehicle assertively merged over into the free lane to get around. A couple of people on e-bikes were all over the place, but at no point did I feel that the vehicle put them in any kind of danger. Starts, stops, and turns were all smooth. End-to-end time was good, the ride itself was comfortable, and the price was reasonable.
On the other hand the Uber driver picked me up in a Tesla that had regen cranked up. They continually accelerated and decelerated the entire way to the airport, rocking the car back and forth the whole time, as if it were a nervous habit to continually press and release the accelerator or something. I felt sick by the time we got to my terminal.
For me at this point, technology like Waymo can't carpet every metropolitan area quickly enough.
One caveat: I should be able to use it (and, hence, pay for it) anonymously.
Waymo is offering a very consistent experience, from the car that is used to the driving behavior.
Taxi services in the past, at least where I grew up, were kind of enforcing a more consistent experience by having requirements about the car and even the color.
But the driving experience was always highly variable and is getting solved by self driving cars.
With uber and Lyft you as the customer gave away some of the experience elements with the promise of cheaper and more abundant transportation.
But the experience has gone so bad, that getting into a Waymo feels so refreshing.
That it requires a Google account is worth taking up with the TCP. That's a tie-in sale.
[1] https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/tcpinfo/
I assume you mean this as a moral claim and I can agree in that case. However, it's meaningless of course and kind of infuriating in any other light, because this is the world everyone has been mindlessly begging for and there is no chance that it comes without extremely severe consequences. An automated world like this means even less power for working people than ever before, so how on Earth do you expect to realize any of these desires? Do you still think capitalists care about your privacy? Even if they did "care" it wouldn't matter because they have to compete.
Why do you think most people did in the first place? We (speaking for the majority of consumers) care more about free services than we do having our privacy protected.
The fact that there are a seemingly endless stream of cases of identity fraud and leaks of private data and we still continue to use all the services indicates that we don't value it very much.
Do I care that Google knows I went to Amazon after searching for a particular book title? Nope. Do I care that Google knows I went to the grocery store today? Still no. I would much rather get a great search engine, free maps, GPS, email, documents, storage, photo backups and more.
If I did care about the privacy of these things, I'd pay for it. Or, I'd use a dedicated account on a different service on a different device that can't be connected if I want to do something I don't want others knowing about, like buying naughty lingerie for my partner or something.
On the way back I ordered an Uber, one driver cancelled the drive, the other started driving in the other direction, possibly using multiple car sharing apps and finishing another ride.
I ended up cancelling and requesting a Waymo. It may not be perfect but at least it comes when requested
Just a month ago my Lyft driver said that God was telling him that the girl he was seeing was a whore because she said he should seek alcohol counseling.
Like six months ago my Uber driver (out of nowhere) said that the driver next to us on the highway (an Audi driving completely normally) must sell drugs to be able to afford a car that nice. The Audi driver was a black man.
When I'm out of town, that rate feels like it decreases though.
That all said, I'd take a Waymo in a heartbeat.
On a personal level I fully understand that.
On a societal level I’d say, maybe it’s helpful not to be completely segregated from a certain social class that seems to exist in your town and to be exposed to them, albeit briefly during a cab ride.
They absolutely can. Uber just prizes availability above service while Lyft perplexingly fails to differentiate itself. To the extent Waymo is cracking the market, it’s not by being an AV provider. It’s by being higher quality.
New York had Juno and then Revel that similarly targeted quality. The former was bought by Uber and ruined. The latter switched from employed drivers to a gig model.
Yes. My Brown-educated perpetually suit-wearing black roommate couldn’t get a hail on 5th Avenue and the credit-card machines never worked.
No comments yet
If someone could automate wheeling the food a few dozen metres from a restaurant kitchen to a table next it would be perfect :)
I don't have a strong opinion yet on the long-term viability of Waymo (or any other competitor) because I think we need to see two things:
* what will the cars look like in 3 years? 5?
* will autonomous tech and supporting infra (like cheap automated parking in sparse parts of cities for cars to stay when not in use) make its way into consumer products at a low enough price point, leading to heavy Waymo users turning into vehicle owners instead? This was one of the issues with the scooter/e-bike rental market.
I bet that’s a reflection of a large “anyone-but-Uber” contingent stemming from the Travis Kalanick days.
No comments yet
The last time was when I could take photos on my phone that were as good enough as lugging around a Dslr.
There have been good products and services in between don’t get me wrong. But none of them instantly blew me away like those.
A lot to unpack there, but it does act as a reminder that most people have been highly critical of the rideshare business model, considering these jobs to be profoundly unfair an unsustainable for drivers. So it comes off as disingenuous to hear claims that we're going to lose an important working class profession. No, we're going to lose a profession that, outside of the densest cities, never made economic sense in the 21st century. It's a profession we want to see disappear. Not that it entirely matters considering that consumers are inevitably going to choose the cheaper, safer option regardless of which jobs may be at stake.
Really? Next time you take an Uber, ask your driver how much they'd like it if they abruptly lost their job. Nobody is forcing people to drive Uber, unemployment is incredibly low, it's not like there aren't other opportunities. Some people actively value being able to set their own hours and not constantly have a boss breathing down their neck.
Street-side parking in downtown areas is far more wasteful than ridesharing cars.
Coverage as a passenger? For what?
It's a pretty delayed process because unless the Lyft hit a tree there's usually at least two vehicles involved in the crash and the insurance companies have to fight over fault. But they do eventually pay out.
Source: Got into an accident in a Lyft. They even paid my salary for the few days I was off work.
What is your source on TLC commercial insurance not paying out for medical expenses sustained in an accident?
And going back to Waymo, wouldn’t having one of the world’s wealthiest companies as the beneficial counterparty solve the problem you’re raising?
Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44258139
I use Waymo's all the time. There are still some quirks they need to figure out and polish the experience, but it really is happening and it appears that Uber's head is in the sands or I'm missing something here.
I agree with your underlying premise that in the (very) long term, all taxis will be automated; I guess the gamble for investors is how long that transition takes, across the globe.
I think there's also the fact that if self-driving cars take off and price goes down, people will ultimately rely on taxis/delivery more than ever. Maybe there is a place for Uber to be the platform for that still, maybe not.
This. Uber can operate anywhere that has human drivers and cell service. Waymo needs (I think) high-precision maps that are frequently updated, and simple traffic behavior.
Traffic in Lima looks like absolute chaos to an American, with endless honking and lane markers treated as vague suggestions, but there are not constant crashes, because the (mostly professional) drivers know the local conventions and communicate with each other by horn, eye contact, hand signal, etc. Huaraz is full of blind 4-way intersections with no stop signs, so drivers honk as they get close to one, and there is a remarkable lack of fiery death.
Waymo can't work in most places until it either changes human driving, or achieves AGI. Uber works as soon as it can pay local drivers.
I'm saying a Jaguar I-Pace with lidar that knows how to follow lines and a high-res map isn't suitable for a lot of the world's roads. And how it will "scale" to what a taxi can handle right now isn't at all obvious.
Also, why would Waymo, in the long term, use Uber for this?
They have the car, the driver, the app/software. They are not gonna share a big chunk of the profit with Uber in long term. The current partnership is probably just a tactical thing for both, not a strategic one.
Those vehicles would then be fitted with the human interiors for the high demand periods you state.
It's not a future where Uber is a viable company though.
Uber has tremendous brand recognition and marketing in ways that Google has never been good at. I don’t think it’s the most likely outcome, but I would not be shocked to see Uber take an minority ownership stake in Waymo, use it as the preferred self-driving option, and phase out human drivers in many areas over the next 10 years.
The interesting thing is that uber loses money on every ride. Waymo charges Uber more than Uber charges the customer.
On Uber’s side, though, this is preferable to losing the entire ride. Uber loses much more slowly by controlling the distribution and losing a few dollars per ride than by losing the entire customer base with no revenue from these customers.