> There's nothing to underestimate, human drivers don't scale the way software drivers do.
Barf. How tech bro can you get? Did you say this unironically?
The number one tech bro or MBA blind spot is the assumption that everything in the physical world scales with software and that every business and type of cost benefits greatly from economies of scale.
There are a great number of examples where that’s not true. Cookies store chains like Crumbl are a really good example. All the economies of scale stuff with them backfires. The product is too low price and too simple to make in batches, so the businesses with the best margins are ones that avoid traditional brick and mortar rent and don’t hire employees.
In the same way, a taxi’s labor cost seems like it’s a huge scaling problem that needs to be resolved but really think about the costs involved with creating that scale to replace them.
The median uber driver’s lifetime earnings might not even equal the amount of money the Waymo self driving sensor array costs to install. A lot of people do the job temporarily, not even long enough to significantly depreciate any equipment or incur maintenance costs.
A typical uber driver doesn’t pay to store their car at home. Waymo needs to rent/buy space to store cars during off-peak hours.
A part time uber driver shares the car repair cost with their personal driving. That driver gets paid $0 to handle all the things on the side you have to do to repair a car like calling the shop or scheduling an appointment. They also get paid nothing to do basic self-service maintenance like gas/charging, replacing windshield wipers, car washes, cleaning the car, etc. every single one of those things is something Waymo has to pay a human to do.
A part time driver can buy a car after it has depreciated, and that cost savings may be worth a year’s earnings or more. Waymo essentially has to buy brand new cars and outfit them with expensive tech.
A part time uber driver can talk to the police themselves. Waymo needs a call center employee to handle that.
A part time uber driver can escape an edge case driving situation. The Waymo needs the call center employee for that.
Any time the rider wants to talk to someone during the ride, Waymo pays someone to answer.
The self-driving software infrastructure including all the R&D and operations staff all represent employees that companies like uber don’t have to hire.
> it cost twice as much as an Uber
Surely incidental since the typical price per ride is about the same. Generally though, the relationship between the cost to operate a service profitably and the price presented to the user is very complex, so just because the price happens to be x right now doesn't tell you much. For example, something like 30% of the price of an iPhone is markup.
> while having a longer wait time for a car
Obviously incidental?
> It also couldn’t operate on the highway so the transit time was nearly double.
Obviously easily fixable?
> One shouldn’t underestimate how economical real human operators are.
There's nothing to underestimate, human drivers don't scale the way software drivers do. It doesn't matter how little humans cost, they are competing with software that can be copied for free.
> Waymo can’t share the business expense of their vehicles with their employees
They can share parking space, cleaning services, maintenance, parts for repair, etc.
> I’m sure it’ll improve but this tells me that Waymo’s price per vehicle including all the R&D expenses must be astronomical.
Obviously, they're in the development phase. None of this matters long term.
> They are burning $2 billion a year at the current rate even though they have revenue service.
"The stock market went up 2% yesterday so it will go up 2% today too and every day after that."
> Plus, they actually have a lot of human operators to correct issues and talk to police and things like that.
Said operators are shared between all vehicles and their number will go down over time as the driving software improves.
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To sum up, every single part of what Waymo is trying to do scales. Every problem you've mentioned is either incidental or a one-off cost long term.