Waymo Reports 250,000 Paid Robotaxi Rides Per Week In US (cnbc.com) 31
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:4, Funny)
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:1)
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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So, in the US there are fewer taxis per unit of population than worldwide? That's interesting.
We have lower requirements to be a driver than other countries (a license is easier to get) and everything about it is cheaper except the vehicles themselves when new. But since most of our states don't have safety inspections, used vehicles are cheaper since they don't have to meet as high a standard. Insurance is cheaper, fuel is cheaper... Taxis are therefore much more expensive compared to vehicle ownership.
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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.
Re: So we've got about 15 million taxi drivers (Score:4, Interesting)
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As a kid in Philadelphia, my neighbor in the nice house across the street was well employed as an engineer for General Electric. That was the height of Space Age and race for the moon. Then, circa 1970, big cuts started, and he lost his job. To find employment as soon as possible, he started driving a taxicab. Seems like a step down - BUT - when he was eligible to have a new engineering job, he kept driving the cab. He said he was making more money that way than he ever did as an engineer.
Just one pers
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Easy answer. Mining operations, construction worker, plumber's assistant, electrician's assistant. The money spent on Waymo, and saved by having cheaper taxi rides, will increase capital. That capital will be spent on new home construction, industrial expansion, things like that.
Remember for every dollar in capital saved in a bank, you allow that back to (in theory) give out $10 in loans. Loans that are used to build stuff .. and that employs people. So when people save money in a bank, they enable loans. A
Waymo has delivered (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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I agree. I saw their cars in SF recently, and while I didn't ride in one, it was incredible to see how well they integrated with other traffic. I was also surprised at the variety of conditions they could drive under - people trying to do weird u-turn manoeuvres, pretty poor road conditions/markings etc. Basically driverless cars are here, and I think the media has expended so much effort on the Tesla driverless hypefest over the last 10 years that they are totally missing the massive revolution that is now
Re: Waymo has delivered (Score:2)
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Not only that, but I guarantee that they are rendered helpless in some of those famous "Texas Flood" rainstorms ... and in snow. Weather has always been the achilles heel of self-driving vehicles. You'll notice they've rolled them out to sunbelt cities and not the snowbelt.
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I always wondered how self driving vehicles deal with potholes. Do they swerve to avoid them, stop or just blast them full speed?
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Good question. I honestly don't know. But guaranteed in the rain, where such things are a lot less apparent, they just blast through them. I wonder whether the axle, wheel, and alignment costs are relatively higher for such vehicles on a per mile basis.
Re: Waymo has delivered (Score:2)
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All vehicles can be rendered helpless by flooding or a big snowstorm. Theoretically, a robotaxi with radar could be safer than a human driver in very heavy rain because it could retain good vision when a human is almost blind. Fully camera based systems like Tesla would have problems.
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They seem to have problems with things like roadworks, so even if they can scan the roads more efficiently in new places, can they keep up with the "maintenance scans" to keep operating in many places?
Also, can they bring down the cost of the refitting of the vehicle to a price point where they can start undercutting the current ride hail pricing substantialy.
Both are still uncertain.
Re: Waymo has delivered (Score:2)
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Apart from technical concerns and the fact that the new generation has more trouble with house ownership and therefore is much less able to own vehicles regardless of preference, it is very interesting to me how people here will get extremely worked up about software-as-a-service, loss of ownership rights and corporate greed, etc... and yet when it comes to having to rent mobility instead it's all cool to essentially pay a forever subscription service for car rides?
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The big difference is that even if you own a car, you still have to pay to use it. You have to pay taxes, insurance, fuel, parking, maintenance. Even if your car sits in the garage all the time, you're still paying a lot to own one.
With software and media this is not really the case, though a lot of software does have ongoing costs these days so some kind of recurring charge is valid.
I also think most people are just annoyed about the exploitative nature of software as a service, not the actual concept. For
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Indeed,
Transportation:
I need a car occasionally, but I still need to pay for the costs even when i do not need one and taking a ride hail is just too expensive for my use cases. So if the cost of ride hail comes down due to automation, I will most likely get rid of the car.
Software:
For software with one time cost my costs are things like a computer, the electricity and the actual software. In the traditional software market I would pay for the software when I wanted, say a functionality that only existed in
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.