Next stop: Miami

This is important if nothing else because Miami sees much more rain than SF and Phoenix:<p>Miami: 57 in. (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncei.noaa.gov&#x2F;access&#x2F;us-climate-normals&#x2F;#dataset=normals-annualseasonal&amp;timeframe=30&amp;station=USW00092811" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncei.noaa.gov&#x2F;access&#x2F;us-climate-normals&#x2F;#dataset...</a><p>SF: 25 in. (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncei.noaa.gov&#x2F;access&#x2F;us-climate-normals&#x2F;#dataset=normals-annualseasonal&amp;timeframe=30&amp;station=US1CASF0004" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncei.noaa.gov&#x2F;access&#x2F;us-climate-normals&#x2F;#dataset...</a>)<p>Phoenix: 7 in. (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncei.noaa.gov&#x2F;access&#x2F;us-climate-normals&#x2F;#dataset=normals-annualseasonal&amp;timeframe=30&amp;station=US1AZMR0313" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncei.noaa.gov&#x2F;access&#x2F;us-climate-normals&#x2F;#dataset...</a>)

I think the most interesting part is that the article says that Waymo&#x27;s handing its operations to Moove. It seems like Waymo&#x27;s trying to become a software provider while having other companies handle the capital-intensive parts.

<p><pre><code> our service – which already provides over 150,000 trips per week across Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Austin </code></pre> Interesting. That&#x27;s about 8 million rides per year.<p>I wonder how close they are to being profitable? As soon as they are getting close to being profitable, they will probably scale this up super fast.<p>I don&#x27;t know how much Google invested into Waymo so far. Something like $10B?<p>If they at some point make $10 per ride, they would only need something like 50 million rides per year to justify that investment with a p&#x2F;e ratio of 20.<p>To go from 8M rides to 50M in 5 years they would have to increase their capacity by 50% per year. Might be possible?

There were three things in Waymo&#x27;s latest CPUC filing that interested me. First, through the end of August, Los Angeles still irrelevant. Over 85% of their California rides were still in SF. Second, ridership in SF doubled in 90 days without a significant expansion in either vehicles or trips per service hour, but they had the cars out on the road more hours every day. Third, the geographic concentration of their rides is extreme, with a large fraction of trips starting near either the Ferry Building or Fisherman&#x27;s Wharf, which suggests that it is popular with and useful to tourists.

I wonder when they will be able to provide service in northern cities (that get snow).<p>Once they can do that -- and (I guess) can prove profitable -- they could expand non-stop across the country.

I&#x27;m so curious about how the internal dev teams feeling about all this scaling. Four cities across 3 states -- surely there are differences in road signs, lane markings, emergency procedures, etc. Let alone the sheer volume of data of doing hundreds of thousands of miles ever week!<p>Massive kudos to them if they are able to do all this without things being aflame on the inside...

That&#x27;s an interesting choice for several reasons:<p>1. Literally nobody in Florida can drive. Nobody indicates. People run red lights. They speed on the hard shoulder to overtake someone else who is speeding slightly less;<p>2. There&#x27;s a lot of things that come down to timing, like when the bridges are up on the Venetian and over the Miami River. You can also get trains blocking the entire of downtown;<p>3. It seems like there&#x27;s constant rerouting for closed roads, typically due to contruction;<p>4. Inclement weather. High winds and flooding. Biscayne Boulevard is often called Lake Biscayne. 30 minutes can be the difference between Miami Beach being dry and every road being 1 foot deep in water (not an exaggeration); and<p>5. What will be the covered area? I guess Phoenix and LA sprawl too but what constitutes &quot;Miami&quot; goes south, west and north pretty far. I mean there&#x27;s no break between Miami, unincorporated Miami-Dade County and Fort Lauterdale.

It will be a showdown of man vs machine in the city with the worst drivers in the nation. Interesting times.

Not from Miami, so I wonder (based on news etc.) if flooding is ever an issue for traffic in and around the city?

The real question is how it will handle Miami drivers making right turns from three lanes over, or refrigerators falling off of pickup trucks with no railing on one side of the bed while cruising through Hialeah.

I’m sure they know much more than me and have thought this through, but it feels like Miami is an absolutely <i>awful</i> choice. Traffic is notoriously chaotic there. I’ve driven in LA, Chicago, NYC, Philadelphia, SF, Miami, etc. It’s by far the worst place to drive, moreso even than Manhattan.

Relevant doomer prophecy ~ <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=040ejWnFkj0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=040ejWnFkj0</a>

How is Waymo going to continue with the iPACE? Jaguar has ceased production of all cars and they are trying to reinvent themselves as an electric Rolls Royce brand.

Waymo, south American and Caribbean drivers. South American and Caribbean drivers, Waymo.<p>If there&#x27;s any stress test for auotmated cars it&#x27;s driving in Miami

&quot;... we’ll work to open our doors to riders in 2026&quot;. I guess it takes a while to set up for a new city!

Let’s see how they do with Miami drivers.

The sheer number of these things that are going to get shot by angry Miami drivers ...

Question: Do Waymo rides ever get on a freeway within their operating territory?

Come to Europe please

I am morbidly curious to see how Waymos interact with the Good Vibes Only crazies. Miami is definitely going to be hard mode for self driving.

Miami probably has some of the worst, most lawless drivers in the country — it&#x27;s like a free-for-all out there. Makes me wonder if Waymo picked Miami as a kind of stress test for their self-driving tech. If they can handle the chaos there, they can probably handle just about anything.

Imagine if instead Miami built MetroRail extensions to the beach and everywhere else it should go, increased TriRail frequency and express services, built a real network of fully segregated greenways etc etc. It would turn transport nightmare into transport heaven. We don&#x27;t need more cars on the streets of Miami or the I95...

Reminder that cars reshaped urban environments and generally for the worse, and self driving cars have a very solid chance to do the same thing:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=040ejWnFkj0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=040ejWnFkj0</a><p>If you have an hour, highly recommended video. A bit too doomerist but the threat is there.<p>Keep in mind that it&#x27;s not just about tech (which can be amazing), but also about social aspects, money and politics (which can be atrocious and generally override morality and technology).

I feel like at this point someone needs to take a step back and think about the general vision and overall goals of this whole fully automated ride-hailing service thing.<p>I mean, what is the exact problem that&#x27;s being solved here? I don&#x27;t mean &quot;problem&quot; like &quot;solving the technical problem of making a car move autonomously in a chaotic city&quot; sense. I mean what is the need that&#x27;s being addressed here, exactly?<p>Ride-hailing workers were already often working for less than minimum wage. They were also handling most of the maintenance and customer relations aspects of the work, for basically free. Are these sexy cutting edge tech firms with eye-watering budgets and even more eye-watering valuations really going after whatever these people were making?<p>If the problem is efficiently moving people around in a city; well to be honest I find this premise a bit ridiculous. Call me a European, but I find the idea that moving 1-2 people in private vehicles on roads being superior than public transit -preferably on rail- simply absurd.<p>Is the idea of living and moving around in a city full of autonomous vehicles actually appealing to anyone? I personally find the whole idea completely disgusting for a number of reasons.<p>What is the goal here? Am I missing a grand vision? What is there to get excited for? Sorry if this post has been a rant-y one. I feel like I am really missing the point of most of these things.

This is terrible. Driving Uber is an important source of income for recent immigrants from LatAM countries.

Jaguar discontinued the I-PACE and presumably does not manufacture them anymore. It must be the case that Waymo is cannibalizing their fleet capacity from other markets for every new city launch.

Waymo is cool, but I have no idea how it is going to compete with the tsunami coming that is CyberCab. Tesla will be mass producing this smaller, cheaper vehicle like nothing else. Covering the entire country with self driving vehicles.<p>I don’t know how Waymo can possibly compete with that. Their deployment by city is slow, their hardware is expensive, slown to produce, and not purpose built for self driving.