Don't those cost like $400,000 a piece to outfit, though? I mean this with tremendous respect because I think they're the only ones doing it "right," I feel like Waymo is kind of 'bruteforcing' autonomous driving using money. There's an inherent limit to the impact of a technology (and thus its long-term value) based on its cost, and even stipulating that Waymo has solved it in general, I think a valuation should be contingent on a roadmap which shows how it's going to scale out -- this seems like an as-yet unsolved problem until someone shows how to combine the reliability of the tech-heavy Waymo system with the price tag of a Tesla.

Historically speaking there was an 80 year period in which transporting mined, natural, lake ice from the US Northeast/Norway around the world was economically competitive with ice machines depending on local market conditions.

Machine ice became competitive in India and Australia in the 1850s, but it took until the start of World War 1 (1914) for artificial ice production to surpass natural in America. And the industry only disappeared when every household could buy a refrigerator.

Self-driving doesn't have to scale globally to be economically viable as a technology. It could already be viable at $400k in HCOL areas with perfect weather (i.e. California, Austin, and other places they operate).

That's like asking if it's better to launch on Falcon 9, or wait until Starship actually hits $100 a kilogram to orbit.