Waymo has had a stellar year. 50,000+ rides per week across 3 major cities is nothing to scoff at, their users give overwhelmingly positive reviews. They are now testing their new purpose built robotaxis [1], which are supposed to be cheaper and get them to scale.<p>They also don't seem to have any real competition right now. Cruise kind of self destructed and it came out today that GM is scrapping plans to build their 'Origin' robotaxis [2]. Tesla pushed out its robotaxi reveal and going by their track record, it won't exist for a long time (they are also nowhere close to doing fully autonomous rides [3], so there's that).<p>Fully deserved, IMO. It's interesting how this funding round doesn't include external investors, but the previous two did. What's the calculation by Alphabet here?<p>[1] <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/23/the-waymo-zeekr-robotaxi-has-come-to-san-francisco/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/23/the-waymo-zeekr-robotaxi-h...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/23/gms-cruise-abandons-origin-robotaxi-takes-583-million-charge/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/23/gms-cruise-abandons-origin...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.teslafsdtracker.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.teslafsdtracker.com</a>
I've mostly switched over to Waymo, but had to take Ubers twice in the last month:<p>* The first one, the driver made multiple racist remarks about different groups he observed as we drove.<p>* The second one, the driver talked at length about UFOs and how they are real, for the entire 50 minute drive.<p>Most drivers are totally normal and don't do things like that, but the tail end of negative experiences can be quite bad. Dirty cars, loud radios, body odor, and unsafe driving are all relatively common with human drivers. A Lyft driver I was riding with a few years back almost ran over a man in a wheelchair who had the right of way.<p>Wait times are also more reliable so far with Waymo. It's not uncommon for an Uber/Lyft driver to accept a ride but then not drive toward you for 5+ minutes. Waymo has the advantage of predictability - both in terms of arrival time and overall travel time (whereas there is variance among human drivers).<p>Sometimes I've had Waymos get stuck, but it usually resolves within 10-15 seconds.<p>Given how smooth, predictable, and safe Waymos are, I don't see a strong reason to risk a negative experience with a human driver (beyond ideological reasons). However, I hope another strong provider comes on the market soon to give them some competition.
I'm so happy with Waymo, the current Waymo passenger experience is unparalleled. It's the future, for sure. It's true that there's no real competitor right now.<p>I've been watching Cruise fleet vehicles drive around in Phoenix, so maybe eventually they'll gain some ground again.<p>Waymo uses their own in-house lidar units as far as I know, but otherwise, it's a good time to be Ouster. VLP-16's cost about $5,000/unit right now.
My prediction (dating back to 2015 when I was working at Uber) is that the cost per trip will never make sense for this to be a viable business model in the way Waymo presents itself as a product. I would really be curious to know how much Google has spent on this project over the last 15-20 years. There are many cheap Honda Civics and many unskilled people to drive them vs the custom real time hardware and software solutions required to power a Waymo trip.
This seems like a self-funded round instead of their 2020 (pre-COVID start) round where they, interestingly, raked in a lot of outside investors: <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/02/waymo-brings-in-2-25-billion-from-outside-investors-alphabet/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/02/waymo-brings-in-2-25-billi...</a>
I think the title is missing a word:<p>“Alphabet _has to_ invest another $5B into Waymo”.<p>I’d like to remind everyone that it’s still a taxi business with taxi margins (best case).
Slightly off-topic and maybe against the typical viewpoint of the site, but if they spent this much money on bike lanes, e-bikes and public transport, self driving cars (and all cars) would get much better.