| ▲ | matthavener 20 hours ago |
| One admirable part of Waymo's service area in Dallas is it serves areas previously devalued by racist redlining. This is in contrast to Uber's Avride and Tesla's Robotaxi offerings, which stick only to the richer, whiter areas of Dallas https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/03/uber-and-avride-launch-rob...
https://dallasinnovates.com/tesla-launches-robotaxis-in-dall... |
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| ▲ | judge2020 20 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| I doubt the geofence exclusion is because of the demographics of those areas and not the demand for autonomous vehicles in those areas, although I don't doubt the latter is a result of the former. |
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| ▲ | smt88 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | I doubt this is correct. “It’s expensive to be poor” — a lot of people who can’t afford cars (or have bad credit) end up Ubering to/from work every day | | |
| ▲ | epolanski 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | How can that be anywhere near financially sustainable. | | |
| ▲ | powersurge360 19 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If you are curious about this, I recommend There’s No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America. It covers how some folks, with no credit, are forced to live in extended stay hotels (where they take cash up front and don’t run credit) which can cost multiple times what rent can cost. If you put the author, Brian Goldstone, into YouTube, you can find some recent news coverage of some of the folks from the book and iirc one of them is Ubering in a lemon, working 60-80 hours a week just to break even. In America, unfortunately, we’ve perfected the debt trap and turned poverty into a profit center. The same equity companies own rental properties, extended stay hotels, and storage locations so they can vertically integrate homelessness. | | |
| ▲ | fragmede 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | The most evil thing I heard was companies like Doordash and Uber buying up data on who has credit card debt, so they know which driver is more desperate for cash, so they can low-ball them and give them a worse offer because they're more likely to take it because they're desperate for it. | | |
| ▲ | frenchtoast8 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Where is the proof of any of this? There are too many conspiracy theories about gig work. There was a similar post on HN a few months back[1] based on some anonymous vagueposter on Reddit, again without evidence. Would I be surprised if this is true? Of course not. Should we just start believing random things without any critical thinking? No. ^1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46461563 | |
| ▲ | bryan_w 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You fell for some kid's story and should feel bad for repeating it unsubstantiated. | |
| ▲ | weird-eye-issue 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Wow that's terrible but also pretty smart... |
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| ▲ | djeastm 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >How can that be anywhere near financially sustainable. It's not and it's indeed a very sad statement on public transport. My father has spent some time in his retirement Uber-ing and said it was shocking to him how many repeat customers he got that were having to spend so much just to get to a minimum wage job. | |
| ▲ | Cider9986 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's not. It's expensive to be poor. | |
| ▲ | heylook 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory | |
| ▲ | reaperducer 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | How can that be anywhere near financially sustainable. All you have to do is basic math. Monthly car payment (which is higher if you're poor) + monthly gas spent (which is higher if you buy it in a poor neighborhood) + monthly insurance (which is likely to be higher if you're poor, and/or live in a poor neighborhood) + maintenance is very often far less than what it costs to take a rideshare ride 14 times a week. When I drove for Uber, about 20% of my rides were people commuting to and from work who could not afford a car. | | |
| ▲ | epolanski 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | Aren't you going 20 times per month, twice, that's 40 rides. At an average 25$ you're spending 1'000$/month on Uber. | | |
| ▲ | reaperducer 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | Aren't you going 20 times per week, twice, that's 40 rides. Work 5 days a week = 10 rides. Plus four rides on the weekend, or not. That's why I used 14. Where do you get 40 rides per week? At an average 25$ you're spending 1'000$/month on Uber. Even if someone did 40 rides per week at your posited average of $25/ride, that's $4,000, not $1,000. Are you letting an LLM do math for you? | | |
| ▲ | ssl-3 15 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They showed their work and named their units. Their math is fine. If work happens 5 days per week, each workday requires two rides, and there are 4 weeks in a month, then there are 40 rides per month. If each of those rides costs $25, then: 5 × 2 × 4 × $25 = $1,000, per month | | |
| ▲ | reaperducer 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | But he didn't state per month. He stated per week, then went back and changed his comment after I replied. Guess you didn't notice that I quoted him. | | |
| ▲ | ssl-3 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | You're so right! That's such a great load-bearing detail! I especially liked the part where you quoted "1'000$/month" and got yourself all confused about the intended conclusion anyway! Good chat, my friend! |
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| ▲ | surajrmal 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 40 rides a month, not week. I'm not sure you're in a position to accuse folks of not doing math when you don't seem to read very well. | | | |
| ▲ | 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | epolanski 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You knew very well there was a typo in the first sentence, and decided to look foolish none the less. It was clearly a per month calculation. |
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| ▲ | DonsDiscountGas 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Carpooling? |
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| ▲ | JLO64 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is somewhat similar to the situation here in LA where they service and very often drive through Westlake/MacArthur-Park which undoubtedly low income. I think it’s for practical reasons though, as they’re not allowed to use the freeways here yet. So for people going from rich areas (Bel-Air/Beverly Hills) to DTLA they need to cross/drive through there anyways. Even so, I’ve encountered plenty of people who live in those areas and have been able to take Waymos which is great given how sketchy that area can be… |
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| ▲ | fragmede 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | Ish. The problem with Waymos is there's no human driver, so they'll adjust pick up and drop off in a way that could be dangerous for the passenger. A human driver isn't going let a passenger off into a dangerous situation. They'll block traffic to drop the passenger off at their destination instead of a few blocks away in a dangerous neighborhood. Waymo's got the legal go ahead to use freeways, but they're working on some of the subtleties of self-driving on the freeway vs city streets before enabling it for everybody. (Specifically, California car culture is you merge left early instead of staying in the right lane until you have to. Apparently the Waymo driver was staying in the right lane.) | | |
| ▲ | holycrapwhodat 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | > The problem with Waymos is there's no human driver, so they'll adjust pick up and drop off in a way that could be dangerous for the passenger. A human driver isn't going let a passenger off into a dangerous situation. In this situation, you absolutely can (and are encouraged to) press the support button in the car to talk to a human agent. They have the ability to tell the car to go somewhere it normally wouldn't go for any situation that humans can reason about. |
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| ▲ | elictronic 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Tesla has fewer miles than I have driven in my lifetime. It’s currently still a half baked product. This might be a story in a few years but today you’re comparing an F150 to a Delorean. |
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