Can any of those companies catch up on self-driving faster than Waymo can pivot to their niche? Cruise seemed to be a distant second, but did themselves in with an attempted cover-up.

There are several “last meters” delivery robots developed.

Short range drones are being used in Australia.

And I heard of at least one company working with apartment architects to standardize a “port” on the building exterior to which a truck/robot would connect to “inject” packages to the inside.

Tiny catapults. It's the only correct answer.

Sadly, this would still be an improvement on many smaller delivery services that especially Amazon is fond of using.

The slaves obviously.

But to be serious, there may be a way of doing it, it just seems very far off unless you're talking about Amazon hub or something like that, where it would be more feasible (but still difficult to achieve).

It might be like that if a Tesla Robo taxi could actually operate like a Waymo

I'd still choose Waymo if it was 100% more than Uber, the experience is so much better and I feel so much safer.

> rapidly cycle their prius between 50 and 70 on the freeway because regenerative brakes save gas (I felt carsick for hours after arriving at my destination)

Weird take to me, unless you were on a lot of hills; at least in my Maverick [0] 55-65 is 'ideal' MPG range for long trips, going between speeds tends to trip things up and actually -avoid- the weird 'battery has enough juice where we just kinda lug the engine' mode.

Doing regenerative 'braking' compared to using physical brakes, absolutely can give energy for momentum/acceleration and save on the physical brakes wear and tear, OTOH any normal cyclist would say it's better to 'maintain' a given output power vs allowing deceleration and then going back up to speed.

As for why, well I'm not a physics person, but in general it's that you are having to overcome the rotational mass/etc of the wheels (i.e. tires, axles, etc), and no regenerative braking within the current laws of physics will make slowing down and speeding back up more efficient, at least on a flat road.

[0] - OK It ain't quite a prius but it works fairly close aside from overall drag...

That TC article doesn't substantiate its overly broad claim. "People" aren't paying more, in general, across its US markets; it only shows that a subset of its customers in what is already the top-5 most expensive cities (SF) in the world are prepared, and at that, only 10-27% are prepared to pay significantly more ($5-10). Still fewer than the 40% who would pay “the same or less.”

Quoting: "Perhaps even more striking is how people answered a question about whether they would be willing to pay more for a Waymo. Nearly 40% said they’d pay “the same or less.” But 16.3% said they’d pay less than $5 more per ride. Another 10.1% said they’d pay up to $5 more per ride. And 16.3% said they’d pay up to $10 more per ride."

There are going to be lots of causal factors: number of rider(s), time of day, safety, gender, wait time, price estimate, predictable arrival. Let's see an apples-to-apples comparison/regression breaking out each.

The words women and woman appear exactly once each on this thread. If there's one thing tech product management needs, it is to ask a woman. This is the most obvious blind spot in tech.

It's unlikely to exceed what search was, but transit is a much more reliable bet for continued revenue. I don't think anyone is betting on ad revenue being reliable at Google long term anymore.

Who pays for search though? Sure it's 100% margin, but it's 100% of not much.

Boeing may never make back the development costs of the 787. That was an absolutely epic disaster of a project. But that doesn't mean Boeing shouldn't build and sell every 787 they can profitably sell.

If Waymo is at breakeven including capex, opex, and overhead, operations logistics becomes the limiting factor. While Alphabet is capable of investing more money into Waymo, I think they've reached the tipping point. If you see Waymo expansion accelerate, bet on that tipping point having been reached.

What makes investors patient when no profits for years, is when they see growth, entrenched commanding lead and network effects, large user base etc. As long as investors can imagine a good likelihood of eventual profitability, then growth in the present is a fantastic substitute for profits.

Growth tells you the eventual profits will be bigger. Leadership and moat gives certainty that the company will actually get the profits for the market they grew.

You need to consider profit margins. The cost of showing somebody an ad is very near $0, which is what makes digital products so profitable. But when you do things in the real world, especially in highly competitive markets where the customer is extremely price sensitive, your profit per mile is going to approach $0. For instance WalMart's profit per item sold is less than 3%, and for driving this will likely be substantially lower (given the combination of customer price sensitivity + competition). The way you make up for this is in massive volume, but Waymo for now remains a heavily ringfenced operation and so it's not entirely clear how they reach scale. Google also has a very poor record of long-term performance in competitive markets.

The winner in self driving will likely be enabled by extreme vertical integration - you want to be building your own cars, cleaning your own cars, repairing your own cars, and so on.

The entire global taxi market is ~$250B a year.

Google made ~$265B from its ads last year.

Assuming there are multiple providers of the software, I’d pay expect to pay normal automotive margins on top of the hardware cost.

That’s probably $1000-2000 per car, or about a penny a mile.

I’m not sure how much a few lidars will cost at scale. The compute board is a few hundred. Modern cars already have plenty of cameras.

There’s clearly a demand for self-driving privately owned vehicles as well, but think of it this way - why own a self-driving Chevy when you could hire a self-driving Cadillac when you need to go somewhere?

I would pay $100k today for a basic EV with Waymo tech. Maybe more. It would essentially be like having a 24/7 personal car and driver available.

I am I really hate driving long road trips.. So yes! Or they could even sell private taxi between states so I don't even have to own a car :)

Isn't that what Robotaxi is?

AFAIK Uber is doing app integrations + some local operational fleet management. Waymo is supplying the cars, radars, computers, remote service, the brand, etc. Waymo has to scale that production and maintenance up country wide and then globally.

Uber's CEO compared it to Marriot, people come in to run the hotels in the local region, but they actually don't own the hotels. It's like hired managers who take a cut.

It also makes sense to have people with local experience run them in each local region. But those businesses still involve margins and expenses that have to make sense.