> maybe they are at around $200k/vehicle? That would be pretty easy to pay for a with a few months of rides.

The 'few months' bit doesn't seem quite right - the cost to get a human to drive a car would maybe be $50k per year, so i'm not sure how a $200k vehicle can pay itself off in a few months vs a $50k car + $50k per year driver.

I'm aware that the cost / ride is higher for Waymo, but it doesn't sound like that would be enough to cover the extra $200k and not certain that scales to other geographies outside of SF.

I mean to pay off a $200k vehicle in a few months you would need each car to be clearing $3k a day in revenue or something like that.

It's probably a few years per car if they are at $200k. If they are 'in the black' or not will probably depend more about their accounting rules (i.e. depreciation) more than anything else.

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maxlapdev 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Note that you probably need 2 or 3 drivers per car to get a similar level of usage of the car that Waymo can do.

	▲	leoc 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Though that will also result in faster depreciation of the (mostly-)autonomous cars.
	▲	Closi 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Very true, although even at 2 or 3 drivers it’s still more than months.

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ddeck 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Just to add another data point, the co-CEO indicated on a podcast 18-months ago that the sensor package cost was <=$100k for the then current generation:

"But saying, you know, picking an upper bound, $100,000 worth of equipment on it, you amortize it over, you know, the lifetime, call it, say, 400,000 (miles), 25 cents per mile. Right. And, you know, it gives you some margin compared to the cost of paying a human driver."

He also mentioned that the next generation would see a "drastic reduction in the cost".

https://www.shack15.com/podcast - ep41

	▲	SoftTalker 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Those Jaguars they drive are not going to last 400,000 miles without several significant overhauls. And interiors will wear out and have to be refurbished. Exteriors will get dented and scratched. Is all that part of the $100k they are amortizing?
	▲	Zigurd 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Waymo Driver 5 was introduced in 2020. Driver 6 was introduced August of last year. So if the interview was 18 months ago he would be referring to Driver 5. Driver 6 hardware is probably built in batches of a few hundred each. Still a low volume CM job, but incrementally cheaper. Probably. If they start building in batches of thousands, that's going to drive costs down significantly.

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jedilord 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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