Waymo's Robotaxi Service Is Now Available To Thousands In San Francisco (theverge.com) 10
Waymo is significantly expanding its robotaxi service in San Francisco. According to The Verge, the company's driverless ridehail operations will now be available to tens of thousands of people across 47 square miles of the city. From the report: To be sure, Waymo's service isn't yet available to anyone who downloads the Waymo app and wants to ride. The Alphabet-owned company is in the process of onboarding riders from its waitlist, which it expects to complete in short order. "This territory expansion applies to those riders who currently have access to our service and all those to be added from the waitlist in the near future," Waymo spokesperson Christopher Bonelli said in an email. "We are still seeing very strong demand, so we want to scale responsibly to maintain service quality and good user experience."
Growing the number of people who want to pay Waymo for trips is incredibly important for the company, which spent at least $1.1 billion on autonomous vehicles between 2009 and 2015 -- a figure that has assuredly grown exponentially in the proceeding years. Waymo will need to increase its revenue significantly if it hopes to turn autonomous vehicles into the profitable business that tech prognosticators have been promising for years. [The company needs more paying customers as it seeks to increase revenue so it can afford to expand to new cities like Los Angeles.]
Growing the number of people who want to pay Waymo for trips is incredibly important for the company, which spent at least $1.1 billion on autonomous vehicles between 2009 and 2015 -- a figure that has assuredly grown exponentially in the proceeding years. Waymo will need to increase its revenue significantly if it hopes to turn autonomous vehicles into the profitable business that tech prognosticators have been promising for years. [The company needs more paying customers as it seeks to increase revenue so it can afford to expand to new cities like Los Angeles.]
Question for someone who gets access to this (Score:4, Funny)
Please tell us whether there's a field for an optional tip. I'm betting there is...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Question for someone who gets access to this (Score:2)
No tip field, they just charge double what the other services want for a human to drive you.
To be clear, I do have access and being completely honest/accurate (I wish it was a joke).
Domo arigato Mr. Roboto (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd probably find all the technology that went into this absolutely fascinating if it wasn't for the fact that what this really represents is another step towards a "you'll own nothing and like it" dystopia. This fits right in with Cali's plan to ban gas cars [harvard.edu], because if you can't afford an EV, you'll be able to summon one of these self-driving marvels and enrich our rent seeking oligarchy every time you need to go somewhere (most likely your commute to your place of underpaid employment).
At least I can say I was alive during part of the period in history when private vehicle ownership was still relatively affordable.
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we know where this will end (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Reagan wouldn't have endured an assassination attempt without taxi drivers. ;)
Re: (Score:2)
At least a robo-taxi "driver" wouldn't have missed everything vital. Hinckley should have spent some time on the shooting range first.
Won't this mean a huge number of job losses? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
> is about to lose that job
?
I wonder how much it currently costs Waymo to run their fleet, say per vehicle/kilometre.
So? (Score:3)