Waymo Reports 250,000 Paid Robotaxi Rides Per Week In US (cnbc.com) 11
Waymo is now providing over 250,000 paid robotaxi rides per week in the U.S., up from 200,000 in February, as it expands into cities like Austin and grows partnerships with Uber and automakers. CNBC reports: "We can't possibly do it all ourselves," said Pichai on a call with analysts for Alphabet's first-quarter earnings. Pichai noted that Waymo has not entirely defined its long-term business model, and there is "future optionality around personal ownership" of vehicles equipped with Waymo's self-driving technology. The company is also exploring the ways it can scale up its operations, he said.
The 250,000 paid rides per week are up from 200,000 in February, before Waymo opened in Austin and expanded in the San Francisco Bay Area in March. Waymo, which is part of Alphabet's Other Bets segment, is already running its commercial, driverless ride-hailing services in the San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin regions.
The 250,000 paid rides per week are up from 200,000 in February, before Waymo opened in Austin and expanded in the San Francisco Bay Area in March. Waymo, which is part of Alphabet's Other Bets segment, is already running its commercial, driverless ride-hailing services in the San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin regions.
Wow! (Score:2)
That's way mo' than I thought it would be!
I'll show myself out...
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So we've got about 15 million taxi drivers (Score:2)
Anyway we're going to add 15 million people to the list of permanently unemployed and unemployable. What do you think is going to happen there?
Feel free to list the jobs these people are going to take. I'll wait.
One of the frustrating things is how little history we actually teach kids. When
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The US dept. of labor statistics says there are less than 400k taxi drivers [bls.gov]; chat-gpt says there are about 1M rideshare drivers.
You seem to be overestimating the number by more than an order of magnitude.
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I found this https://www.scmo.net/faq/2019/... [scmo.net] which states "In 2016, there were an estimated 18 million taxis in the world."
So I believe the 15 million figure is for the whole world. It is probably a little low but it would also be reasonable to assume that as least some drivers would find other work so is perhaps closer to the mark than it would, at first, appear.
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So, in the US there are fewer taxis per unit of population than worldwide? That's interesting.
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Feel free to list the jobs these people are going to take. I'll wait.
Any. There's literally countless unqualified jobs you numpty. There's entire industries who are desperate for workers where qualification requirements are minimal. People had jobs before taxis, people had jobs before the gig-economy, and people will continue to have jobs afterwards.
There's literally no taxi drivers who would be permanently unemployable as a result of this. Literally none. Zero. Driving a taxi isn't remotely the job of last resort you think it is.
Waymo has delivered (Score:3)
I had been fortunate to ride with an employee in the pre-beta days (only employees got to "hail" a ride), and then as an early rider in a targeted city, and now as a semi-regular rider in another city (I also was, in a previous life, a semi-regular taxi rider in one of the largest taxi cities in the US). The Waymo robotaxi's can be extremely conservative in some of their choices, but I would schedule (and ride) them in an instant, as they just work and are competitive in pricing. And that, in the end, will be the defining requirement for most.
I rode Waymo last week (Score:2)
It just feels...totally normal. It's exactly as though there's a driver, but there isn't. Waymo does't operate in my rural area yet, but I had the opportunity when I attended a conference in Tempe, AZ.
Now I just have to hope this proliferates everywhere by the time I can no longer see well enough to drive.