As someone who works in commercial real estate, involved in about $300M of housing development, some of it affordable, i will say without any doubt that driverless cars are a very effective affordable housing policy that is not being considered or discussed by anyone.<p>Any public dollar that gets contributed to housing, basically adds a 50% cost factor and assume whatever it is used for will take 2-3x as long to deliver anything you can live in.<p>So instead, Cities should lease Waymos (or other brands), and provide these vehicles for use by affordable tenants in properties with limited parking.<p>Building housing with no parking is not feasible for 95% of deals. You simply won't get financing or you'll end up handing the keys back to the lender and bankrupt on the deal. Instead, if you could hand to your investors and lender an agreement which provides a car for every 3 units, that tenants have first priority to use for free (or an amount subsidized per month) up to reasonable limits, then you'd address the concern "where are people going to park and how to get to work?".<p>it's way more efficient than building $100 billion in transit that will take 200 years to build.<p>What's it cost per year to lease? $30k? That car can be full time serving 4-10 units daily? The cars can be rented to the public on off hours to offset their operating cost.<p>It's a lot more cost efficient and can be done TODAY, not 5 years after complicated LIHTC financing with 4 layers of other public funding, 3 years of approvals, and 2 years of construction.
God, I love how Americans will do anything but build public transport
Sarcastic and self-satisfied comments like this are uninteresting IMO. The GP comment is talking about reducing parking requirements for new development, and parking requirements are probably some of the least efficient use of land imaginable. But he shouldn't talk about that because it'd be better if every city all across america suddenly had public transit tomorrow? It's like if a city in europe was talking about setting up a cooling station in a town square during a heat wave, and someone condescendingly commented "god, I love how europeans will do anything but install air conditioning." It's just not that easy and one doesn't preclude the other
Many European countries do install AC actually, poor ones at that, so it'd be a valid point because yes, it's that easy.
One thing about private car ownership in the US is that it is a VERY BIG country and sparsely populated so who will pay for the public transport connecting every nook and corner because in the US it's so sparsely populated. Even in India I see metro train being very successful in places which are densely populated but in states like Rajasthan which are very big and sparsely populated there public transport is a failure because who will pay for the fuel when people are not enough.
Walking and public transport are good options in Europe because European countries are small and are more densely populated
THIS.<p>It's not like there isn't _fabulous_ public transit in every other developed country. All they had to do was make healthcare and education low cost/free.
In the countries that are closest to America's peers (Canada, Australia, NZ), the public transit is also lacking outside of a few dense cities.
Just because it's not a train doesn't mean a self-driving car system isn't public transport. Free your mind.
Waymo is already working, on roads today, for less time and money than it took to build zero miles of high speed rail in California.
A network of fully autonomous electric self-driving cars on a developed roadway can only be superseded in efficiency by high speed rail. There is no way that traditional forms of public transit could outclass it. This is Waymo's big moneymaker: public contracts. The bus drivers and taxi drivers unions will fight it, but smaller towns looking to build denser housing and make their public spaces more walkable will happily adopt this as policy, and it will eventually spread to the bigger cities.
It's effectively xenophobic to comment such as you did about "Americans" without addressing the points by the author, which deal with real, structural issues.
Aren’t Waymo prices above Uber’s? That’s what I’ve seen in SF.<p>That is to say that I don’t think the economics work. You’re better off offering free Ubers. And I doubt that will solve many issues.
Waymo charges more than Uber to supply constraints, not bad unit economics. People (like me) are willing to pay extra for the product Waymo offers, and Waymo is itself supply constrained and has no direct competitors offering driverless rides, so they get to do a bit of monopoly pricing.
As someone who knows anything about Texas cities, I assure you that parking space is not an issue in Dallas
yes it is. it's still a cost.<p>but anyways, texas does not have the same cost of living issue as other metros like most of CA. that's up to local jurisdictions to do this. just like any city can build rail or bus.
As someone who has lived in and around Dallas for a long time, parking is a constant source of tension, going in both directions of not having enough and having too much. It's a massive cost factor as well.
Here's another idea:<p>The places where people want to live have no land or archaic zoning laws.<p>I wouldn't <i>want</i> to live two hours away, but if I could sleep/work during my commute, and pay $400/month for it, I might do it. My housing costs would be like less than a third of living in the metro where I work.<p>Supercommuting becomes slightly more palatable.
Why should a tax payer in Dallas pay for your [affordable] transportation from the outskirts of Houston or OK to commute to Dallas?<p>tax payer sources needs to be allocated to a <i>project</i> that can be administered, tracked, and iterated on.<p>Plus the public should pay for services servicing more people than less, which your idea services a small population.
Perhaps I'm understanding things wrong, but isnt the idea of taxes for public good and some / all of it might never reach you?<p>I pay for taxes that help run schools, and it is an good setup even if I dont have any kids.
these things will be evaluated based on the net benefit such a service would provide. more people having affordable commute to dallas would end up increasing the net benefit and value that dallas has.<p>cities grow in capabilities in direct proportion to the number of people who have access to it and their capabilities. it might be cheaper labour leading to better roads, plumbing etc
Or you can offer subsidized ride shares for $1.50 a ride. <a href="https://www.dcta.net/getting-around/gozone-demand" rel="nofollow">https://www.dcta.net/getting-around/gozone-demand</a>
I'd go further and say that in most smaller cities that try to run a bus service but just don't have the ridership to support adequate service they would be better off just subsidizing Ubers or Waymos or whatever is available. Pare down the bus service to only the heavily used routes and run them way more often.
100%. Most bus routes are terribly expensive to run, multiple drivers, benefits and then the physical equipment. It would be interesting if you could work out a subsidy program for low income riders.
This is already the case. A lot of transit agencies have a vanpools, rideshares, and ridehales for their low frequency areas. I used one recently in Tacoma because my ferry was late and the bus from the ferry arrives only ones an hour.<p>I will say it was super nice. However, I would prefer a regular and a direct bus any day. Being able to just walk into a bus, scan my transit card and get on with my day is a much preferable experience then to order a ridehail via an app.<p>So if a transit agency can just increase their bus frequency, they should. They should not however pass the limited funds they do have over to a private company.
America, the place where they will try anything except for building good public transportation, walkable and bikeable neighborhoods.
Self driving cars are public transportation and make areas much more walkable and bikeable.
It's important to understand the history, wherein:<p>There was a time when we had all of those things that you mention. But cars quite clearly won; the others lost.<p>Towns and cities then continued to grow. They did this in car-centric ways because that fit the transportation style of the time.<p>And now, it is stuck this way.
> And now, it is stuck this way.<p>Unless this is sarcasm, isn't it kind of strange to decide that history just happened to end in this moment?
Cars clearly won… or did the car industry use its monopolistic powers to acquire and shut down our train networks while also relentlessly lobbying for more (and permanent) car infrastructure?<p>Also, just because things are one way today, doesn’t mean they can’t be a different way tomorrow. It’s all a what we we make of it and decide to fight for
i know multiple developers with public dollars to build housing $800k-$1.2M per unit. so i don't know, maybe come up with a better solution I'd be happy to hear your idea that is realistic and will deliver more units at a lower cost.
> America, the place where they will try anything except for building good public transportation, walkable and bikeable neighborhoods.<p>This isn't a movie. It's real life. In the movies, sure, you can have a wizard reshape entire cities, power distribution, roads, sewers, potable water production and deliver, move entire neighborhoods kilometers away, move businesses, factories, airports, etc.<p>In the real world, once a city is well established, while your ideas might be commendable, they are simply not realizable. It's a fantasy. It will not happen. And this isn't because we are some kind of a horrible society who do not want these things. It's because reality. Nothing less. Nothing more.<p>The other reality is that we can't build anything here any more. My favorite thing to point to is the California high speed train project. I think it has been over a decade now and at least 10x over what they promised it was going to cost. I don't think we have a single mile of usable track built, much less moving trains.<p>The other one is the Los Angeles International airport's automated people mover (SkyLink) which is indefinitely delayed and $1 billion over budget. The project started in 2019...and we are still waiting for it to be usable. Oh, and it's just 2.25 miles of low speed overhead monorail (I think) track like they have in Las Vegas (might be a different design).<p>So, like I said, I love your ideas, but, in the real world, they are fantasy. Sorry.
You say it can't be done, but it's literally happened several times before. The most recent being when we built all these urban highways.<p>It turns out you don't actually need to tear up sewers and electrical infrastructure to run bus routes. Who knew. Density can change when you change zoning laws.
I get what you're saying, but in this particular case we're talking about Texas. The people down there think that bike lanes and walkable neighborhoods are a plot to send in UN soldiers who will forcibly vaccinate them with 5G nanobots. I'm only slightly exaggerating.
> Any public dollar that gets contributed to housing<p>... in the US<p>> Building housing with no parking is not feasible for 95% of deals. You simply won't get financing<p>Because of completely broken land use, transportation polices, building regulation in the US, they are very feasible in many other parts of the world.<p>> if you could hand to your investors and lender an agreement which provides a car for every 3 units<p>Or some kind of vehicle that comes by every 15min and connects to a network of other transports that are time interval based.<p>Or have car share vehicles attached to the property. Something that is routinely done in Europe for decades.<p>> it's way more efficient than building $100 billion in transit that will take 200 years to build.<p>Except it doesn't last that long and is not that expensive unless you are incompetent and live in a broken society.<p>Cities in China added 100s of miles of metro since 2010. Making bad excuses and doubling down on car dependency are a big part on why its not happening.<p>And btw. the US has so many fucking roads already (btw they are also very expensive, but I guess that money doesn't count), if the were competent they could spend 6 month and few 100 million and build absolutely amazing bus transit system. But of course taking a lane away from cars wouldn't be acceptable, better give money to waymo so people can sit in traffic in a Waymo vehicle.<p>It is not about cost, its about political will and the societal believe that public transit is for the unwashed poor and racially inferiors, spending money on it is charity, not transportation policy, and that any upstanding citizen in a car needs to have unlimited freedom to drive everywhere and never get into trouble.<p>> That car can be full time serving 4-10 units daily?<p>This has been done for many decades with carsharing already, its standard practice in many developments. What exactly does Waymo or self driving change here from an investor perspective? Ok maybe if its really close buy the Waymo can go back when you don't need it anymore. So maybe you need half as many. But of course the Waymo vehicle is also much more expensive and has capacity you don't need.<p>But of course, even with that carsharing concept, the far better solution that almost everybody in the developed world does, outside the US, is to simply have good public transport, you build it first, and then build the new housing around those transport links. Car sharing is only for very niche situations and that's a good thing, because more cars in cities are bad.
> if the were competent they could spend 6 month and few 100 million and build absolutely amazing bus transit system<p>$346 million gets you utility improvements and 2 miles of bus lane: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Ness_Bus_Rapid_Transit" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Ness_Bus_Rapid_Transit</a>
I can't change, nor can a group of politicians change how broken the US land use and transportation policies are. But what can be done is leasing a car that can drive itself with minimal labor for $100k over 5 years that unlocked more housing to get built.<p>You're hilariously wrong on most of your points because just spend 5 minutes researching how CA fails to build rail. Not even worth responding to further.
People don't car share in the US, and don't want to.<p>Building arrangements that would rely on them are mostly illegal anyways.<p>Allowing driverless cars to serve buildings without parking would be a huge step forward for those reasons alone.<p>For what it's worth, it's mostly illegal to build a housing that's the only served by buses too.<p>Last, the US has passed the point where it has the cheap labor and government competency for mass transit. Faster to do something now than wait for a new government or robotics that can replace all the construction workers and designers
> ... in the US<p>Dallas in the United States.
Self-driving cars will kill off your kind of real estate developers once and for all. Because there is no such thing as "affordable housing".<p>All housing on the market is by definition "affordable". If someone buys it, then somebody can afford it. The proper term is _subsidized_ housing.<p>Anything subsidized is destructive in the long run.<p>Fortunately, self-driving cars and mild carpooling (3-4 people per car) will eliminate road congestion and allow comfortable suburban living while still having access to the dense city cores. And mild carpooling does not have the main disadvantage of transit: turtle-slow average speed.
How do self-driving cars reduce congestion? Don't they increase it because of empty riders between customers? I'm with you though on getting up parking space in high land value areas
Right now the average car occupancy during the rush hour is ~1.5 persons per car. By increasing that to 3-4 people, you can easily double the effective road capacity. This will completely resolve the congestion in the majority of metro areas, even with induced traffic.<p>No car platooning, flock routing, car trains, or anything similarly exotic is needed. Just mild carpooling. People are not doing that now because it's a logistics nightmare that removes most advantages of owning a car.
> How do self-driving cars reduce congestion?<p>At what scale? As a non-trivial percentage of road traffic they can reduce congestion in a million different way. For example, predictive and cooperative route planning (you know what the road looks like 0 to N Km ahead and plan accordingly.<p>The other one is one of the most frustrating things humans do while driving: Slow down while going uphill. Where I live, except of accidents, this is probably the #1 source of traffic jams on the highway. I don't know what it is with some people (and it doesn't take but a few to cause a mess). Are they not paying attention? It's a chain reaction, once a few cars slow down, traffic coming up at speed log-jams behind them. And, of course, because in the US (or, at least, in CA) nobody has the courtesy to move over the right if they want to go slow, you easily end-up with 4 to 6 lanes of perfectly good highway absolutely jammed. Once over the crest every seems to drive like Max Verstappen. It's both tragic and hilarious to observe.<p>So, yeah, self-driving cars --at scale-- can absolutely reduce congestion by driving far more intelligently than most humans do.<p>That said, at a scale that approximates a rounding error they probably can't materially affect traffic.
By your definition a Lamborghini is affordable, because someone can afford it. I don't think that holds up.
Yes, it is. That's why "affordable" is a bad term.<p>There's also a problem with the way this term is used in practice. It now ended up meaning _subsidized_ housing. An average person would NOT be allowed to buy this housing.<p>To continue the analogy, real estate developers have to build some Lambos and give them out for free. But only to the right people.
I actually hate the term affordable housing because you're right, its not affordable. The wood, concrete, roof, and mechanical system costs about the same all things considered whether you're renting for $5k/mo or $500/mo. I make the same point it should be called subsidized housing too.
> provide these vehicles for use by affordable tenants in properties with limited parking<p>Translation: Poors are allowed to exercise their freedom of movement iff they stay in a huge corpo's good graces.
Solves one of the big problems with public transportation.<p>If waymo is willing to ban people for shitting or smoking meth in their shared cars, that's purely an advantage over government run transportation
> Translation: Poors are allowed to exercise their freedom of movement iff they stay in a huge corpo's good graces.<p>Would it placate you, if we did it for non-poors instead then?<p>I am a non-poor, and I would like a free/subsidized waymo with priority mode set for sharing with my neighbors. My belief is that it would help the poors more than me, but if doing so is oppressive or freedom-restricting or smth like that, I would gladly take that burden off their hands.
The point is that some people have other options. Personally I will always choose to go where I want, when I want, in the privacy of my own vehicle. Even if Waymo were completely free I'd still choose those things, and I am thankful I have the option to choose.
Good for you, and I fully respect other people making choices like that. I don't believe that you should be forced into a situation that makes you use waymo despite your wishes, and I believe that you should be able to opt out (in case you want to).<p>Back to the topic, why should I not be allowed a choice of having a subsidized/free waymo that prioritizes me and my neighbors (given I would be participating in this fully out of my own volition)?<p>If I am allowed to make that choice, do you believe that poors should have access to the same service and be allowed to make the same choices as non-poors in that regard? If no, then why not?
Would you rather have that or be living on the street? Maybe let people without housing have that choice
"huge corpos" - obviously you don't know what you're talking about. Most affordable housing is owned and operated by non-profit organizations or entities, most of which are very small.<p>plus, the government needs to solve for affordable and workforce housing. The market can deliver plenty of market rate units if you don't be stupid and over regulate it.
> "huge corpos" - obviously you don't know what you're talking about.<p><a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204426000048/goog-20260331.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204426...</a><p>Total liabilities and stockholders’ equity: $595281000000.<p>How big to they have to be before they count as ‘big’ to you? In your ideal world, getting your Google account banned not only means losing all your photos, documents, contacts, conversations, and access to all your other accounts (GMail) but now also means you can't go anywhere besides what you can reach on foot, via whatever anemic local transit exists, or via similarly-expensive Uber/etc. Super cool; sign me up.
Surprisingly low hype for a company running perhaps the most advanced consumer-interactive robots. I’m quite fond of these machines and will periodically rescue them when someone has misused them (door not closed, most commonly). Hope they do well. Very good road participants.
People seem so used to it now. I love them, I think they're probably one of the most exciting tech I've used in the last ten years. They're also like magical little rescue pods when socially overwhelmed in a busy city.
I want trains.
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They're also covered in cameras the police have access to, which have been used to track down legal protestors in the past. That's why there was a spate of people setting them on fire a few months ago. Basically, every Waymo car is a Flock camera.
I live very close to LAX, and we have hundreds of Waymos in our area. At first i was a little weary, and kinda weirded out by all of them.<p>They have become completely normal, and cause WAY fewer traffic incidents than human drivers. They are very predictable, and will always let you pull in front of them when changing lanes (unlike a lot of other LA drivers).<p>I have seen a few incidents where they seem 'stuck', and it was a bit annoying and kind of funny, but again, it does not happen nearly as often as for human drivers.<p>I also like taking them. It is nice to just get in and relax and not have to talk to anyone or worry about who is going to pick you up. You can control the temperature and music from your phone, you can drop the pin exactly where you want to be dropped off and picked up, and the ride is smooth and comfortable.<p>We can debate all the knock on effects of Waymos, but the user experience is pretty great.
>and cause WAY fewer traffic incidents than human drivers.<p>Ironically the best way to verify this is that when they do cause traffic issues, it becomes national news.<p>Imagine breaking down and blocking an intersection in Edgewood Georgia, and then getting a call that night from your Uncle in Oregon saying he saw your breakdown on the news...
Would we apply this same logic to Tesla Autopilot?<p>As a disclaimer, this is neither an anti-Waymo comment or a pro-Tesla comment, I just find in interesting how these small sample size incidents are both covered and perceived in the absence of actual verifiable safety statistics.
I'm sure we could, but since vehicles using Tesla FSD require human supervision almost everywhere and Tesla is aggressive about getting drivers in autopilot-related crashes to sign NDAs the comparison is kind of moot.
I'm under the impression (worth a check) that we do have verifiable safety statistics and that Waymos are significantly safer than Teslas at this point?<p>That's not to say that Tesla's autopilot isn't safer than the average human driver—it might be—but I thought it was settled territory that Waymos are better on safety.
Not really a fair comparison between Tesla's autopilot and Waymo though. You'd have to compare Tesla's Robotaxi but I believe they have been running for a far shorter period and I'm not sure how much data is out yet or how reliable it would be at this stage. The Robotaxi runs I believe a different version of autopilot meant to not have a human driver and has a lot more work that goes into making sure it's highly tested in the area it is being deployed. Whereas the Tesla Autopilot I believe can work in pretty much any area, so it may have more potential issues that come up.<p>Also a common thing I see happening with the Tesla Autopilot for an accident is that it's often not the fault of the autopilot. It's often the fault of the human driver who takes over last second. Naturally the driver will lie or not even realize they were the problem as they may have had auto pilot active 1 second before the crash. I think it's that natural human instinct when you see something happening to crap the wheel or hit the pedal in that "oh shit" kind of reflex. And that sometimes causes the driver to make a mistake.<p>I actually was in a crash with a person driving a Tesla vehicle where I think this was the cause. 3 lane highway, they were in the center lane, I was in the left lane, transport truck in the right lane. The transport truck slightly drift towards the edge of their lane and the Tesla driver freaked out and over corrected their steering wheel to the left and came swerving into my lane and was losing control of their car between both lanes until they suddenly slammed on their brakes in front of me. I gotta say, the Tesla brakes combined with the regenerative braking have some impressive stopping power. Unfortunately that also meant they stopped way faster and so suddenly that I hit their rear a bit. I got very lucky that insurance ruled in my favour and had them 100% at fault.<p>Apologies for the tangent, just trying to illustrate a point via a personal story of how even when the system is working well and keeping the driver safe, they can still make a human-like overreaction which overrides the autopilot and leads to a crash.<p>I get pretty annoyed when I see news articles with the headlines "Tesla crashed while auto pilot activated", but then there has yet to be an investigation and we actually don't know whether autopilot was in fact active or not yet. It's a clickbait style headline that I think makes people more hesitant about the progress of Waymo and Robotaxi vehicles.
> It's often the fault of the human driver who takes over last second.<p>Per The Guardian:<p><pre><code> “Two years prior, the NHTSA had flagged something strange – something suspicious. In a separate report, it documented 16 cases in which Tesla vehicles crashed into stationary emergency vehicles. In each, autopilot disengaged “less than one second before impact” – far too little time for the driver to react. Critics warn that this behaviour could allow Tesla to argue in court that autopilot was not active at the moment of impact, potentially dodging responsibility. […]”
“The real surprise came after [Mark Rober’s] experiment. Fred Lambert, who writes for the blog Electrek, pointed out the same autopilot disengagement that the NHTSA had documented. “Autopilot appears to automatically disengage a fraction of a second before the impact as the crash becomes inevitable,” Lambert noted.”
</code></pre>
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/05/the-vehicle-suddenly-accelerated-with-our-baby-in-it-the-terrifying-truth-about-why-teslas-cars-keep-crashing" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/05/the-vehic...</a>
I kinda feel like "It's often the fault of the human driver who takes over last second" means it is still Autopilot's fault. It either needed to alert and hand-off control to the user well before the situation got bad- or stick with control. Getting into a bad situation and just handing off control is the worst possible way to do things. The human needs time to update their situational awareness, the Tesla needs to explain what is causing its concern to the human, etc. If it can't do that effectively- and quickly enough in the pre-accident moments- then it needs to not be used at all because it is more dangerous than just a human driving on their own. 20 years ago I did robot-human driving collaboration experiments for the US Army and I can tell you based on our experiments this is a really hard problem, but those experiments are why Tesla's entire approach has seemed suspect to me from the beginning.<p>It's either functional or not, this sort of half-assed system is the worst of all worlds. And I say this as someone who has routinely trusted his family in a Waymo. But I think that the Tesla approach is much more dangerous.
> Edgewood Georgia,<p>I love when HN mentions my state or city, but that's the road and neighborhood one block down from me. I feel seen.<p>To add something more substantive to this thread, apparently Google's deal with Uber for distribution has become incredibly adversarial in our state. Uber won't explicitly let you book a Waymo or let you know if you're in the Waymo range.
Definitely never seen it written as "Edgewood Georgia" before but I there really is only one.<p>Okay two, Avenue and the shopping center.
Thank you so much for revealing your location. This data point has been added to your shadow profile. Kind regards, Palantir.
There was a story here about it hitting a child (I think) but it was determined to be much less serious than if a human driver was involved
<a href="https://medium.com/the-generator/a-waymo-vehicle-hit-a-kid-but-thats-not-the-full-story-8ea4c189c2e9" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/the-generator/a-waymo-vehicle-hit-a-kid-b...</a><p>"As the Waymo approached the double-parked SUV, a child ran out from behind the SUV and into the roadway, directly in front of the Waymo."<p>Waymo cannae change the laws of physics. Braking distances exist for AI-driven vehicles just as much as human-driven ones.
And if anything, I'd expect machines to have faster reflexes than humans. The Medium article is walled off, but I found another source[1]:<p>"The child reported minor injuries and did not require transportation to a hospital. ... Waymo said at the time that the child ran into the street from behind a double-parked SUV and that the vehicle braked hard before contact, reducing speed significantly before impact."<p>Edit: Waymo's blog[2] says it "reduc[ed] speed from approximately 17 mph to under 6 mph before contact was made", and that "our peer-reviewed model[3] shows that a fully attentive human driver in this same situation would have made contact with the pedestrian at approximately 14 mph".<p>[1] <a href="https://ktla.com/news/local-news/new-details-released-in-waymo-vehicle-crash-with-9-year-old-near-santa-monica-school/" rel="nofollow">https://ktla.com/news/local-news/new-details-released-in-way...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://waymo.com/blog/2026/01/a-commitment-to-transparency-and-road-safety/" rel="nofollow">https://waymo.com/blog/2026/01/a-commitment-to-transparency-...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://waymo.com/blog/2022/09/benchmarking-av-safety/" rel="nofollow">https://waymo.com/blog/2022/09/benchmarking-av-safety/</a>
> Braking distances exist for AI-driven vehicles just as much as human-driven ones.<p>Reaction times differ, though, and abilities to blend deceleration and turning and awareness of what else is around.<p>(Waymo's tendency to be a good defensive driver and bleed a few miles per hour at anything odd help too... though it is worth noting that if Waymo was 1MPH slower, that 6MPH collision wouldn't have happened at all).
<a href="https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY26FH008.aspx" rel="nofollow">https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY26FH008.aspx</a>
In SF, there's a crosswalk on a street near me where cars regularly go 35 mph, so they rarely stop for pedestrians. A few days ago, I was waiting on the sidewalk to cross, and a Waymo stopped. I was so surprised, at first I thought it was letting someone out. It took a few seconds to realize that no, it was stopping for me to cross the street.
I took one to a show at the Hollywood Bowl. Chaotic traffic environment: lots of cars, cones, people directing traffic, pedestrians everywhere. It did great.
In chaotic environment it was probably human driving, or rather directing the car remotely.
YMMV. I tried to order one from a bar. It got confused when it got there, did a 3 point turn in front of me then left without me.
>You can control the temperature and music from your phone<p>That's really cool but makes sense. Can't wait for them to be available in London. I'd use them instead of Uber even if they cost much more.
Whenever I visit San Francisco I get the sense that these robo-taxis are nothing but public transit for those who are willing and able to spend extra money.<p>I would not compare the user experience to drivers, or the safety record to private cars. I would compare the user experience and the safety record to human driven taxis, buses, light rail, and metro. I am curious if the rider experience is actually any better then taking the M train from the Castro to SF state or the 49 bus between the Mission and Geary. The latter is certainly cheaper, and orders of magnitude more efficient.
If the train goes exactly where you want to go, I would always say take the train. It's spacious and clean.<p>But if where you're going is only served by bus or requires some walking... it really depends on how you feel. Waymo is pretty expensive, but I have had some truly miserable bus rides in SF.
There is a reason I picked the 49 as my example. When I lived there 15 years ago, the busses were lacking to say the least. Extremely slow, got stuck in traffic, crowded, etc.<p>Since the BRT lane on Van Ness, taking the 49 is more like taking a more shaky Muni train honestly. Frequent enough that it doesn’t get crowded, and it doesn’t get stuck in traffic, meaning much faster ride. As San Francisco builds more of these bus lanes, the case for the robo-taxis is only going to get weaker.
It's very interesting, because on one side we have clear data showing that autonomous cars at the Waymo level are safer than humans.<p>On the other hand we don't give technology the same pass we give to humans, meaning that we don't tolerate machine incidents the same way we tolerate human ones.<p>Which means that self-driving cars need to be a magnitude of order safer than humans.<p>And even though a self-driving car will never road rage or use the car as a weapon on christmas markets, we'll still tolerate humans driving more than one odd 1-in-a-billion ai-error caused incident.
I don't think you can just look at the statistics though. What I mean is that, the main issue is that the category of mistakes they make are going to be inherently different from the category of mistakes that humans make. IE, humans are more likely to make emotional mistakes, but self driving is probably more likely to make perceptual mistakes or fail to respond to novel situations. I think the "fail to respond to novel situations" is probably the biggest blocker for people to trust them enough for widespread deployment. I'd love to see one of these things drive on a poorly mapped dirt road up in the mountains, for instance (I'm not saying it can't -- I just mean I would personally love to see how it can adapt to that kind of situation)
> <i>I don't think you can just look at the statistics though. What I mean is that, the main issue is that the category of mistakes they make are going to be inherently different from the category of mistakes that humans make</i><p>Would you rather have a X% chance of a loved one dying from a human-category mistake? Or a 0.5X% chance of a loved one dying from a ML-category mistake? I would take the latter in a heartbeat. Why waste time optimizing for "categories" when you can optimize for your loved ones not dying
While I agree with you, not everyone does.<p>You and I are thinking with a purely logical thought process, but most people don’t reason that way.<p>A lot of people want to be able to hold someone accountable, and that is more important than the pure probabilities.<p>They want to be able to blame a person for making a mistake.
That is not the way human beings typically evaluate risks. 'Acceptable risks' are more about psychology and not a statistical calculation. A self driving car that is twice as safe as the human average would be considered an unacceptable risk.<p>Add something that is new/unknown + lack of control, and you will have to clear a very high threshold to be considered 'acceptably safe'. My guess is a minimum of a 0.1x.
I don't think that human beings factor the rate of injury or death in at all, because human beings are notoriously bad with expected values from extreme conditions.<p>Once people get used to taking robotaxis, they won't care. The bar is "safe enough for very few people to have a bad experience." If you take 10 robotaxi rides in a row and they all go flawlessly your subjective interpretation of the risk will be that there isn't any.<p>I feel confident saying this because if you die in the US to anything other than old age, it was almost certainly a car crash. Despite this, most people don't think twice before getting in a car.
> <i>humans are more likely to make emotional mistakes, but self driving is probably more likely to make perceptual mistakes or fail to respond to novel situations</i><p>Humans fail chaotically. AVs, at least Waymos, fail safely. In urban environments, there is a case to be made within a few years for banning (or making it massively cumbersome) to manually pilot a private vehicle.
That's an odd claim. Human failures are uncorrelated, but the Waymos all running the same software must be expected to fail in the same way, in the situations in which they fail. Which is why they often make the news; one Waymo stuck soon sees many of its brethren join it.
Don't humans fail in the same way too, broadly speaking? Wouldn't it depend on how you categorize failure?<p>If a Waymo failed because it missed a stop sign, and then another Waymo failed because it was confused about some strange markings on the road, is that not failing "the same way" in the same sense that a person failing to yield or driving drunk?
[dead]
Statistics is still the most reliable indicator, because you can’t really tell if a situation is “novel”. How novel is novel? I doubt even Waymo knows for sure.<p>People will trust them by familiarity, not by any objective measures. Their trust grow as they see them more often, without bad accidents.
My understanding is that they only operate in areas they’ve had approved and pre-mapped out for them though. Practically I don’t think the scenario you’ve described would ever happen, but I too would like to see it (I suspect they wouldn’t handle it well).<p>I live East of DTLA and twice I’ve seen people driving them around, presumably to map those areas out. It’s pretty annoying that I can’t use them for my late night commutes yet, but I’m eagerly looking forward to when I can!
IDK, I've been in the car with someone when they just up and up drove off the road because they failed to notice that there was a corner - and that's a <i>sober</i> human. Another time, someone else, they rounded a corner, saw a tractor in the other lane, and were so surprised that they hit a tree. My mother has totalled six cars - she insists it was someone else's fault every time, but the statistics are somewhat damning. My wife's driving has given me haemmorhoids, I clench so fucking hard. Blind corners at twice the speed limit, looks over her shoulder to talk to passengers, and I constantly find myself buying wing mirrors, fenders, headlights, body panels, hubcaps, and anything else she can break off on traffic, rocks, or street furniture. Well, I did until someone finally took her license away from her for a year.<p>So... not so sure. Every AV I've ever been in has driven incredibly cautiously compared to a human driver.
> a self-driving car will never … use the car as a weapon<p>You are lacking in creativity and vision. With networked autonomous vehicles, all cars can be used as a weapon simultaneously.
> meaning that we don't tolerate machine incidents the same way we tolerate human ones.<p>Any company that builds self driving cars or operates them should show how reliable they think they are. Not by showing pr material or stats, that's all 'free'.<p>Make yourself, as the company, legally liable. If you think it's good, put your name on it and own the risk.<p>When that happens, I'll trust whoever says it's safe.
> or use the car as a weapon on christmas markets<p>On the contrary, autonomous vehicles (especially if something like automated package delivery becomes an offered service) allow car bombs without the suicide bomber inside. Instead you just place an explosive in the device and send it to the intended destination - as an organization the primary concern then becomes whether the ride is traceable back to you which might be do-able given how "frictionless" rideapps are as long as you get a burner phone, prepaid credit card and are very careful about making sure the device is clean and can't be tied to your person.<p>Right now the tech is limited to places where carbombings aren't commonplace, but I think driverless cars open a huge potential issue in other markets. I absolutely agree they're safer than drivers are, but let's not be hyperbolic.
When a human driver messes up, there's a person to hold responsible. When a robot car messes up, who is held responsible? If the human messes up to the point they are no longer allowed to drive, that person is no longer on the streets to cause more mistakes. When a robot car messes up, are all of the other cars pulled off the streets as well until the glitch is fixed? Every robot car is essentially the same driver.
While we hold humans financially responsible for all accidents, we don’t hold them personally responsible in every case. Most accidents end with no arrests or even tickets. If your hand slips on the steering wheel, you don’t go to jail.<p>Robot cars would be the same. Insurance is financially responsible, and if the accident is deemed caused by a flaw, it would be the company that made them that is held responsible for fixing it.
Don't we have automated systems all around the world with the same element at play? Elevators? Trains/Subways that are autonomous, robotic lawn mowers, self-driving little delivery vehicles on sidewalks, all kinds of automated machines in factories that kill people, etc...<p>I feel like you could come up with long lists of cases where there is no direct human to blame. Someone may be at fault down the chain, but nobody who was directly controlling the machine. Just like if a mechanic screws up my brakes and I end up crashing, it wasn't directly me who caused the crash, even though I was sitting in the seat.
Why would it work any differently than any other category of product or service? If you’re rich you can sue them, if not you’re fucked.<p>Unless there’s a very bad and widespread issue. Then you join a class action and get $24 on a visa giftcard you can’t figure out how to redeem and then forget about.
Mistakes aren’t glitches when the environment is so dynamic. I imagine they are making errors constantly, and constantly learning from them.<p>When a robot car makes a mistake, all robot cars learn from the experience. When a human messes up, only that human learns from it.
> When a robot car messes up, who is held responsible?<p>The company owning and operating the robot?
I use Old Glory Robot Insurance.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4Gh_IcK8UM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4Gh_IcK8UM</a>
If a human makes a mistake, we give them the liability to own up to their mistakes, and carry the costs.<p>Most self-driving enterprises are trying very hard to ensure their non-driver continues to carry this liability instead of their company.<p>This helps a them v. us attitude. The company needs to be trusted widescale by the public, and do seem to undercut their own PR efforts on that, repeatedly.
> <i>we don't give technology the same pass we give to humans</i><p>This was the hypothesis. But based on <i>e.g.</i> FSD, it doesn’t seem borne out in reality.
> On the other hand we don't give technology the same pass we give to humans, meaning that we don't tolerate machine incidents the same way we tolerate human ones.<p>I completely disagree with this. I don't "give a pass" to humans killing other humans with a car.<p>Every year that skeptics delay adoption of autonomous driving is another year where tens of thousands of deaths could be prevented.
Tesla, in particular, has given those skeptics so much ammunition to be mad at. The delay isn't purely due to luddites but also somewhat driven by prior obvious bad actions by self-driving car companies.<p>It's also likely that if a switchover is aggressively pursued it'll cause a massive social backlash and likely evolve into a culture war issue.
> On the other hand we don't give technology the same pass we give to humans, meaning that we don't tolerate machine incidents the same way we tolerate human ones.<p>It comes down to accountability, IMO. We tend to be forgiven to humans because we are humans too and we know we, humans, make mistakes, and these can have serious consequences.<p>When a human makes a mistake, they are immediately accountable, and therefore judged and forgiven (or not). When technology makes a mistake, who's to blame? The CEO? The software developer who wrote the code? The tester? The architect?<p>Yes, we want technology to be an order of magnitude safer than humans for this reason, because we know that, given the current way our judicial system works, when technology makes a mistake, no one is held accountable.
We don’t tolerate machine incidents because who is liable if an accident occurs? A company with a $4.6 trillion market cap? They’re not a legal opponent any of us really want to take on.
Lawyers are salivating at the possibility of suing Waymo if they ever make a mistake. Much better to be hit by a Waymo (or a Tesla Robotaxi) than the typical uninsured, "judgement proof", human driver.
Exactly, imagine the huge sums of liability insurance Google is carrying to make payouts when the worst-case scenario happens. That financial burden is a prime driver of their operational safety record.
Any stats to back up that the _typical_ driver is uninsured?
An exaggeration on my part. About 16% of all drivers are uninsured (<a href="https://insurance-research.org/node/130" rel="nofollow">https://insurance-research.org/node/130</a>), but "accident probability of uninsured drivers is 34 percentage points higher" (<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19439962.2018.1477892" rel="nofollow">https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19439962.2018.1...</a>).
Good point because massive insurance companies can't afford lawyers and no one ever sues large companies.
> a magnitude of order<p>unless I'm missing something, you meant "order of magnitude"
I used one last time I was in Silicon Valley and I was super impressed with its driving. Very confident and felt super safe.<p>I can’t wait for broader adoption of self driving cars.
Been in a Waymo in SF — impressive tech. But I keep wondering: does the math actually work? Car + all the sensors + maintenance + mapping. Can a single vehicle ever turn a profit?
Uber rides are around $1.5 per mile on average. Assume Waymo car drives 200K miles over it's lifetime, 3mi/kWh EV efficiently and $0.20/kWh electricity cost. It will generate $300K over it's lifetime and use $13K worth of electricity. Right now it costs $150K to manufacture Waymo car because they are custom built and Lidars are still expensive. Even at $150K unit economics should be OK. But the cost of self driving cars will go down as they are manufactured at larger scale and will eventually approach cost of regular mid-range car. In a few years they will be under $50K per car. Mapping is a one-time cost and the need for mapping will eventually disappear. This will be a massively profitable business for self-driving fleet operators.
> Can a single vehicle ever turn a profit?<p>That depends on how low they can get the costs. Waymo took delivery of the last Jaguar i-Pace, and are scaling up production of the Zeekr-based EVs, which I assume are significantly cheaper.<p>I think the math works, using car rental companies as an anchor point: they are (mostly) profitable*; they have relatively lower Cost of Revenue, but Waymo will have much fatter margins.<p>* There was a blip when Hertz had to write-down its bold bet on EVs didn't quite work out.
Are you running your replies through a LLM, or is the LLM producing them entirely?
These companies are taking a very long view (and are funded accordingly). The future vision is one in which cars with drivers just aren't a thing in cities anymore. Nobody owns a car to use in day-to-day intra-city journeys; instead, you just take a drive in an autonomous vehicle on demand.
Back of the envelope, three car costs $200k, charge $20/ride, say that ride costs $5 to operate, $200k/$15 gets you 14,000 rides (rounded). Say 10 rides a day... shy of 4 years to break even.<p>Substitute in whatever numbers you think are reasonable.
I thought about this as well. The dsytopian world I think will exist in the future where the Waymo is priced higher and people will want to take it more, over a cheaper Uber. Precisely because the human driver is removed from the equation.<p>So yes, I think they will be able to turn a profit by charging more for the experience. Which is a humanless car.
I was talking with someone visiting from Florida the other day and they were talking about how Waymo is slurping money that would have otherwise stayed in the local economy. E.g. you pay an uber driver, the uber driver pays the grocery store, etc.<p>This is something that had never occurred to me since I love taking Waymos here in the bay area. I guess Waymos operating in Florida need local labor to maintain and clean the cars? How are others thinking about this?
DFW is amongst the top 5 metroplexes in the US and is extremely low density, high sprawl with few public transit options and a car heavy culture. This is a a welcome change.
Service area: <a href="https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9059119?hl=en#DAL" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9059119?hl=en#DAL</a>
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 <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/03/uber-and-avride-launch-robotaxi-service-in-dallas/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/03/uber-and-avride-launch-rob...</a>
<a href="https://dallasinnovates.com/tesla-launches-robotaxis-in-dallas-and-houston/" rel="nofollow">https://dallasinnovates.com/tesla-launches-robotaxis-in-dall...</a>
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.
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.<p>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…
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.<p>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.)
> 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.<p>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.
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.
Here in Austin, I'm stuck calling an uber and hoping I get a Waymo. When does that deal expire?
It ends in 2028: <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/24/uber-and-waymo-to-end-exclusivity-arrangement-in-atlanta-and-austin.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/24/uber-and-waymo-to-end-exclus...</a>
When the girls breakup prolly: <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-07-15/uber-and-waymo-are-sparring-the-robotaxi-future-has-arrived" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-07-15/uber-a...</a>
It is so so so so so so bad to have to risk an uber every time I want to hire a Waymo.
Missed opportunity to say "Open to Y'all"
This urbanist youtuber did a really in-depth video on what the future could look like (both good and ugly effects) if self-driving cars become enough of a success to affect the way we build infrastructure<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0</a>
I'm just curious how it works on the legal side: if a human run the red light he gets a fine, who gets fined with a waymo car?<p>If the car I'm in cause a big damage or kill someone? I guess the damage will be paid by the insurance but whom insurance? Mine or waymos? And what about criminal implications? Insurance doesn't cover thoose for sure.
It should be the same as for any public transport: it's the service operator's responsibility to run the system. The rider doesn't need insurance.<p>I imagine Google has enough money that they can self-insure. Particularly since it's a very low accident rate.
I used to give out speed camera tickets. How do you think this worked? We didn't know who was the driver. It didn't matter. We ticketed the vehicle owner. Not sure how this is different? There are workplace injuries all the time in places like factories due to automated machines. Elevators/Escalators have caused fatalities or injuries and don't have a direct operator. I mean there are tons of things in life with no direct human to blame immediately on scene.
<p><pre><code> > Dallasites
</code></pre>
Is that seriously the demonym? Terrible. Try harder, Dallasites.
It sounds too much like "parasite" for me to be comfortable using it. I'm assuming some random person made it up. It's okay to just say "people of/from <place>", guys.
Having grown up in Dallas, I usually just say "Texan" and call it a day.
Dallasians?
Dallasers?
Dallaslets?<p>Dallards?
Dalwegians?
Dallazens
Dallamites, Dallsatians
Dallonians
What's your better suggestion? Dallasonian? Dallaser? Dallasan?<p>Also, do you have the same issue with the demonyms Manhattanite or Seattleite?
I vote for dilly dallasers.
Texas -> Texan
Kansas - Kansan
Honduras -> Honduran<p>It should be Dallan?
We go by North Texans.
Dallmatians
I like North Texans
I thought it was a typo, or strange url at first.
better than "cityofhate" which is what we're called most of the time.
In all fairness, I've noticed people here in Dallas/TX are indeed more racist than the East and West coast cities, esp. towards brown people.
Understandable, I'd also hate to live in Dallas /s
I'm with you on this and this is something I brought up on Dallas subreddits before moving here and got downvoted to oblivion.<p><pre><code> "Dallasite" sounds like "parasite". Dallasian/etc. would be better.</code></pre>
Elon may have been technically correct about 'if humans can do it with vision only then theres no reason why vision-only cannot work' but turned out to be the wrong strategy for learning how to get there. lidar gives you a constant stream of data to check your vision yourself against and interatively learn. Once trained you turn it off. whereas teslas strategy ended up having to rely on human drivers for error feedback which made the learning loop way longer.
Why would we want to have robot cars that only drive as good as humans can?
It's far far too early to say whether it turned out to be wrong.<p>Tesla also has a robotaxi service in Dallas, FWIW, in testing.
Elon annoys me. Waymo has AFAICT simply a better safety record than Tesla. And he runs SpaceX...?
I am really wondering, how they tackle the long trail problem of unknown situations. Sure they are monitor them constantly but I am asking precisely, how to handle situations that occur ridiculously infrequently: do they sample them 1000x in sim? Or do they use a different model and track uncertainty in the model constantly?
How to get another 0 between the dot and the percent sign in situations where the model makes the wrong choice with a significant probability?
How do the cars do when breaking a rule is necessary? For instance, a car is broken down in the one forward lane of a two-lane road, requiring the waymo to cross the double-yellow line to get around it. Or, a signal is red for so long that obviously its car detector isn’t working.
It handles these circumstances. Definitely seen it cross to the other side with oncoming traffic to get around a truck blocking a lane. For the signal light, never experienced that, but I imagine after awhile it'd figure it out. Possibly with the assistance of a remote human telling it.
No freeways. But Waymo now is available to all of Dallas?<p>Does that include the suburbs?
It's open to _everyone in Dallas_, not available _in all of Dallas_.
I believe they paused freeways everywhere because they drove through some construction (or didn't handle construction zones well).
Open to all people, not open to all roads.
looks like Bishop Arts -> Fair Park -> White Rock -> NW Hwy -> Hampton/Inwood, with a weird section jutting out toward Irving along 114<p>so, no suburbs, only enclaves
Why isn't downtown called the <i>superurbs</i>?
Something to hold in mind are the issues with scaling out to new cities in terms of safety risks: <a href="https://junkoyoshidaparis.substack.com/p/rapid-scaling-turns-into-av-achilles" rel="nofollow">https://junkoyoshidaparis.substack.com/p/rapid-scaling-turns...</a>
Can't wait for this in my town. I also can't wait to see people freak out over them.
Why are the cars so big? Wouldn't it make sense to have a bunch of much smaller, single person vehicles?
Tesla Cybercab has about three or four times the efficiency and like a fifth of the price by having smaller, two person vehicles. Indeed, the vast majority of trips are taken by single people and it's ridiculous to have a giant machine for them. It would also be okay to have a handful of larger, Model Y-sized vehicles for the multi-person trips.<p>To actually answer your question: Part of the reason why the Waymo cars are so big is because they got a deal on buying all the Jaguar I-Pace vehicles, which checked several boxes:<p>* Electric vehicles and hybrids are preferable for self driving cars as they have robust electrical power for the sensors and compute<p>* Larger minivans or SUVs are preferable for both development work and early scaling up where you can't afford to have both smaller and larger vehicles<p>* The I-Pace wasn't selling well so they managed to snag the whole production batch<p>* Though Jaguar isn't exactly known for their great reliability and electrical systems, the I-Pace, manufactured by Magna Steyr, is actually decent<p>The first two reasons are why the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid, the only hybrid minivan sold in the US, was so popular for early self driving car efforts (including with Waymo) in the 2010s.<p>That said, Waymo's Ojai is somewhat more space efficient than the older I-Pace. They also have the Ioniq 5 coming.
The cybercab would be almost perfect if it weren't for it's low height. It's easier for the elder to get into and out of taller vehicles.
I have one of the most inefficient EVs and it's only 2.4x hungrier than the cybercab. It can comfortably carry 6 adults. I've been in Tesla 3s as Ubers before. They only need 31% more energy than the cybercab.<p>If the cybercab was 1/5 the price it would be $14k. It won't be $14k.
The Waymo I-Pace is much less efficient than the regular roadgoing I-Pace. One X user posted a pic of the dashboard of a Waymo with 111,000 miles on the odometer, and it averaged 1.0 kWh per mile [1][2]. This is about 2.5x worse than the EPA rating of a normal Jaguar I-Pace. Probably the difference is because the Waymo has tons of compute and the sensors have a surprisingly large impact on aerodynamic efficiency. I was being generous to the Waymo in my original comment. If we compare the actual rating of the Cybercab at 165 Wh per mile, it would be 6x as efficient.<p>Also, whereas the stock Jaguar I-Pace was $70k, the Waymo one with all its sensors and compute have estimates ranging from $150k to $200k. In a comment made in late 2024, Waymo CEO Dmitri Dolgov mentions that the sensors and compute themselves cost $100k [3].<p>> The equipment on Waymo’s fifth-generation robot taxis — electric Jaguar I-Pace vehicles — costs as much as $100,000, Dmitri Dolgov, Waymo’s co-chief executive, said on a podcast in February.<p>That is the same generation as the current I-Pace fleet that makes up the majority of Waymos.<p>[1] <a href="https://eletric-vehicles.com/waymo/waymos-retrofitted-robotaxis-guzzle-several-times-tesla-cybercabs-energy/" rel="nofollow">https://eletric-vehicles.com/waymo/waymos-retrofitted-robota...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://x.com/niccruzpatane/status/2073967445509882286?s=20" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/niccruzpatane/status/2073967445509882286?s=20</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/04/technology/waymo-expansion-alphabet.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/04/technology/waymo-expansio...</a>
Referring to the example from the Twitter post you cited, wouldn't the KWh per mile simply be a lot higher because these vehicles are engaging in much less efficient travel overall? City driving itself is often pretty inefficient because of all the stopping and going, and these vehicles likely are driving in a lot of the rush hour traffic and high density areas everyday. Not to mention they probably idle around a lot more than a normal persons car would in a day.<p>So wouldn't that be the reason the figures would look 2.5x worse than the regular Jaguar? I'm sure there are other factors of course since running the computer systems, lidar and all the other features will also consume more power, so I'm sure from a baseline it will be less efficient anyway, I just think because of the kind of driving it engages in, this will make it also look far less efficient.
Possible, but EVs tend to be more efficient in city driving than highway driving, thanks to regenerative braking and the fact that the dominant form of energy loss, air resistance, scales quadratically with speed.
> <i>Tesla Cybercab has about three or four times the efficiency and like a fifth of the price by having smaller, two person vehicles</i><p>I read this as <i>Tesla Cybertruck</i> and was mightily confused for a minute.<p>Looking it up in Wikipedia I see it has no driver support (steering, pedals, etc). Is that even road-legal?
Why would it make more sense? It isn't like a car half the size would cost half as much, but it would severely limit the capacity. Now, you can get a waymo for 1-4 people, but if some (or all) were single occupant, you would be limited.<p>Being smaller does not help that much much in cost per mile, but has a big cost for functionality.
It would make more sense to make them even bigger, and to have one vehicle service many people. Maybe they could even be linked together for efficiency, and put on rails so the self driving is super reliable.
I’m thinking that since 2015. Like BMW C1 just with doors on the side and a bit more security. This would approx allow 3-4x as many travellers on a given route compared to traditional cars.
SFC costs don’t scale linearly with volume or number of seats.<p>The cameras, LIDAR, and sensors are all fixed costs. You need them on even a single-person car. And they’re extremely costly.
Americans are fat, they don't fit.
Keeps on being rolled out in red states while being delayed in blue states, quite unfortunate.
Divide this differently:<p>- states where the major cities commonly have snow for > 3 months<p>- states where the major cities commonly have snow for < 1 month<p>Inclement weather is likely the differentiator. Blue state California gets Waymo in its biggest cities, which handily do not get much snow. The other Waymo cities are all below the Mason-Dixon Line.
Blocked even from testing in NYC. Blocked from DC and Boston. Unfortunately this does have more to do with bad government than bad weather.
Boston, according to Waymo[1], is dependent on the legislature making autonomous vehicles legal. Apparently NY state laws also require a human driver at the wheel.<p>The only surprising thing about this is that other states did not require changes in law. It's Good, Actually, that big companies are (sometimes) bound by the same laws that bind the rest of us.<p>In any case, there are more than 2-3 "blue" states. We can note that it's also not running in cold "red" states either. The climate angle fits the data best <i>and</i> aligns with what Waymo says, which aligns with what we have known about the tech for at least a decade.<p>(That note also suggests they are still testing their cold-weather kit and are not quite ready.)<p>1 - <a href="https://waymo.com/blog/shorts/back-to-boston/" rel="nofollow">https://waymo.com/blog/shorts/back-to-boston/</a>
Getting around Boston is very easy. Flooding the streets with more cars won't make it easier.<p>A government that listens to the people it governs is a good government.
Eh, the impression I got from this podcast (<a href="https://www.searchengine.show/the-trial-of-the-driverless-car/" rel="nofollow">https://www.searchengine.show/the-trial-of-the-driverless-ca...</a>) was that unions and other special interests were blocking something that the broader population would be interested in.
They tried to roll out in New York City, but the city did not approve.<p><a href="https://www.twu.org/twu-tech-newsletter-waymo-no-mo-in-nyc-for-now/" rel="nofollow">https://www.twu.org/twu-tech-newsletter-waymo-no-mo-in-nyc-f...</a>
I personally saw a Waymo in NYC on June 26th at 14th St and 8th Avenue, so they’ve done some recent testing at least.
NYC's government is focused on maximizing the pain and inconvenience for its citizens. So this tracks.
NYC has Mamdani, who is a very progressive populist mayor, and a longtime (active) supporter of the taxi drivers union.<p>There is close to zero chance it gets approval in NYC before 2030. I'd be totally floored if he goes against the union, but the optics are absolutely terrible for cabs.
They have been fully open here in Los Angeles for almost two years now.
It is unfortunate, but we're still in the early days of AV's. I think that more cities and states will be amenable to them once they have proven themselves as indispensable.
the metro areas where it gets rolled out are all blue regardless of state
It's easier to roll out in places where it seldom snows.
"Maybe it's something you've got that they haven't got." - Owen Kellogg
Is it unfortunate, though?
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I wonder how they would handle a freak snowstorm
Service area is still miniscule.
Ive really been enjoying waymo, ill pay a premium over anything else for them.
Waymo sells itself<p>People hate human drivers more than they hate the <i>idea</i> of AI drivers<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/business/uber-sexual-assault-lawsuits.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/business/uber-sexual-assa...</a>
It’s an extremely consistent experience, and you can sit in the front seat (something I like personally). With Uber and taxi services, you never know what kind of driver or ride you’re going to get.
The real test is, can these self-driving cars drive I-4 without getting into any sort of wreck?<p><a href="https://www.worldatlas.com/places/the-most-dangerous-highways-in-the-united-states.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.worldatlas.com/places/the-most-dangerous-highway...</a>
Good case for shorting Uber longer term. The Persian taxi driver may be a good exec but he lost the race
I love waymo, but it's very costly compared to Uber.
Dallas drivers are bad enough already...
I love Waymo. The only problem I have with it is that it further siphons wages from local economies into Silicon Valley, beyond what Uber/Lyft already did.
Dear American government regulators: nationwide autonomous driving is proving to be easier than delivering fiber to every home. Why do you hate Americans?
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Anyone with a credit card
Debit card works just fine with Waymo, just like with Lyft and Uber.
Is that so?<p>When all I had was debit cards, I couldn't get any of them to work with Lyft or Uber in 2021.<p>I had plenty of money. I had nothing better to do than to try to make it work while I sat outside of that airport on a steamy July day in south Florida. I could not make it happen.<p>There were probably other ways to solve the problem, but I eventually got someone else to send me a car so I could get to where I was going.<p>(These days, I do have some credit cards. But amusingly, Uber won't let me log in at all unless I verify the number of a debit card that I had in 2021 -- a card that they refused to use, and which was associated with a bank that is itself no longer in business. That card is long gone.)
I'm sure you can imagine why it might be unnecessarily complicated for a Waymo to take cash.
There are tons of automated systems which take cash. I do agree it would add some complexity to the equipment in the car, but its not like it would be <i>that</i> difficult to do it. These cars have to go back to the depot <i>eventually</i>, emptying the cash bins would just be one more cleaning step. I do agree though they don't bother because it probably would cost more to manage in the end than the amount of rides they're losing not accepting cash.<p>Just another example though, while credit card processing fees aren't always cheap its not like its free to process cash.
And presumably their app?, which requires either an Apple or Google account.
What reason would someone have not to have a credit or debit card? Credit cards are literally free money, as long as you pay the balance off on time
It does seem necessary to have cameras inside driverless cars but I don't want to if Google is running the show. Your biometrics will probably be stored for "enforcing Google's policies" at a minimum [1].<p>And then a Waymo dropped teenagers off at the police? I don't care if that was a human, I don't want no snitch car service [2].<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49027861">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49027861</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.404media.co/waymo-called-police-on-teens-san-mateo/" rel="nofollow">https://www.404media.co/waymo-called-police-on-teens-san-mat...</a>