California Approves Waymo Expansion to Los Angeles and SF Peninsula [pdf]

Re:California Approves Waymo Expansion to Los Angeles and SF... by aetherson on Saturday March 02, 2024 @09:37AM (#39572821)

A taxi doesn't have a lifespan of 8 years, and note that while I don't think that a Waymo car costs anything like $1M, it's also not actually the case that you pay taxi drivers $140k per year.

I see very little to suggest that a Waymo car costs less all-in over the course of about two years than a Prius and an Uber driver does, and that's the much more relevant comparison.

Nothing to say that this couldn't change in the future. But that's my guess for the status quo.

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Re:California Approves Waymo Expansion to Los Angeles and SF... by fragmede on Saturday March 02, 2024 @03:49PM (#39575629)

Take $40k* for TCO for a Prius for 5 years, plus $140k for the driver to get to $190k. Using $140k because that matches the availability of software that doesn't need sleep.

$190k - $80k for a jaguar ipace leaves $110k per vehicle for Waymo to work with, multiplied by the size of their fleet. How much do we want to figure a pile of sensors, computer hardware, and custom housings to cost? Minus insurance and electricity, which I don't know how much to figure and the answer is yeah I don't know. $110k over 2 years doesn't seem like that much, but multiplied across a sizable fleet it adds up. I'm sure they're scaling up as fast as they can.

* https://www.edmunds.com/toyota/prius/2022/cost-to-own/

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Re:California Approves Waymo Expansion to Los Angeles and SF... by mckn1ght on Saturday March 02, 2024 @05:02PM (#39576159)

> about two years … that's the much more relevant comparison

why is 2 years the relevant timeframe?

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