Waymo has received our pilot permit allowing for commercial operations at SFO | Hacker News Reader

Waymo has received our pilot permit allowing for commercial operations at SFO

waymo.com

714 pointsChrisArchitect776 comments

This sentence was a bit cute: "Waymo has received our pilot permit allowing for commercial operations at San Francisco International Airport." Yeah, that kind of pilot.

I really had to read through it twice to make sure they were just talking about car taxis picking up travelers, rather than some kind of prototype pilotless commuter helicopter or something.

That was my first interpretation, and I was very surprised and kind of afraid. Glad to know they aren't trying for autonomous flight yet.

I have zero expertise for my claim, but I feel like autonomous flight is easier than autonomous driving.

The hard part of automated driving is dealing with all the ground clutter that planes serenely fly over. If pedestrians could charge out in front of a 777 going 650 mph at 34,000 feet... well... we'd be living in pretty different world! And in that world, flying would be much more difficult. Not just for computers but for humans too.

Flying is obviously much harder than driving, but it's a sort of harder that is generally more amenable to automation, though I still think pilots are a good idea because when it goes wrong it goes wrong much worse.

Flying is almost always easier than driving. landing is hard. Bad weather is hard. But just flying - human pilots have napped many times over the years and it only rarely is an issue. Airplanes with primitive autopilot are very good.

Not to mention that almost all civilian planes in the US are required to broadcast a bunch of details that include their coordinates and altitude on a public channel (ADS-B). It's the kind of automated collision avoidance input that you'd probably dream of as a self-driving system engineer. Basically the only thing you'd need to avoid via more complex systems is the odd military traffic, small craft at low altitudes, and birds.

In the abstract yes but in practice the economic (ratio of cost of pilot to pax miles) and safety context of aviation mean fully autonomous flying has to be extremely robust before it has actual utility in industry.

In practice, you're also currently very reliant on infrastructure that is definitely not as solid as you want (eg: ILS and GPS can be interfered with quite nastily).

ILS being under maintenance and unavailable for certain runways is also far from unusual.

On the happy path, yes. Though I don’t think takeoff is automated yet.

Currently we rely very much on the problem solving abilities of human pilots to deal with troublesome situations. Autopilot will disengage in many scenarios.

I'm pretty sure drones can already take off on their own. Taking off is a lot easier than landing, and planes have auto-landing tech already.

0d (parked) - null program easy

1d (train) - easy. just one lever

2d (car) - hard. super hard. why is it so crowded? who thought this was a good idea? you let teenagers do this?

2.5d (plane at takeoff or landing) - almost as hard as car. fewer pedestrians.

3d (plane flying) - easy even with all those extra levers

I'm not actually sure how hard landing is. Most airports that support autonomous landings do it by having ILS antennae that guide the airplane to within tens of feet of the runway, at which point the airplane switches to radar for altitude.

Automatic landings started in 1964. I think that it seems hard mostly because of how tightly regulated aviation is - modern technology could probably make things a lot better if people were more receptive to the idea of heavy automated aircraft over populated areas.

1d, variant (tram) - hard, who thought it was a good idea to send rail-bound vehicles and steerable vehicles down the same road?

3d, variant (orbital) - super hard, so hard that trajectory pre-calculations has to be performed

When everything is working correctly, no other pilots have emergencies, and no temporary restrictions are in place, and there are no clouds in the sky. Then yes, it /could/ be easier, but almost always it never actually is.

There's a reason the majority of accidents occur during take off and landing.

Spend some time listening: https://www.liveatc.net/search/?icao=ksfo

It depends a bit on your safety standards. There are already autonomous flying things delivering blood and blowing up oil depots where it doesn't matter so much if stuff goes wrong, but to be an airline pilot you have to know how to deal with a huge range of emergencies and systems packing up.

With a car if the engine fails you just pull over. With an airliner it's not so simple. As a result the training for a pilot is much longer than for a bus driver say.

Navigation might be easier. The battery and safety tech isn't there yet to make it practical.

Not a pilot myself but it seems that a large part of the danger with flying is that when something goes wrong you are much more likely to have a high speed crash. Cars don't even usually travel at speeds that planes crash at.

When shit goes wrong for a car (such as Waymo) you just stop. Now, that's not trivial, but it's also not very difficult, I expect most of it can happen even if the Waymo hardware itself were suddenly destroyed, rolling along is the hard bit so not doing that isn't too difficult. Everybody aboard can just leave when it stops moving.

In contrast when shit goes wrong for a plane we've got a big problem. Just stopping will definitely kill everybody, even from a modest altitude at a very low speed suddenly plummeting to the ground will straight up kill you. So, we want to land, albeit maybe we have to "crash land" destroying the vehicle to perhaps save its occupants.

You can buy (and indeed to some extent you can even retro-fit) emergency auto-land for small planes. Once engaged, or if set to do so automatically upon pilot failure the plane will figure out where it is (using GPS), pick the emergency radio frequency and announce the problem and its intended solution (I am a machine. My human pilot is incapacitated. I intend to fly to X location and land there. I am not listening to you and cannot understand you) and then it will fly to a chosen place and attempt to properly land the aeroplane, broadcast on radio that this airfield is now closed (this aeroplane is parked on the landing strip so you can't use it!) and then switch off.

Maybe the pilot is still alive and human medics can rush them to hospital. Otherwise maybe there are passengers who have been saved. In any case at least the aeroplane is now on the ground where humans can easily take over e.g. moving the plane so the airfield can re-open.

My layman's understanding is that we've been doing it already for decades with expert system "AI", so likely much easier than navigating streets with other people.

In a pinch, a car can just put on its hazards and pull over

That “just” is doing some heavy lifting! The car still has to deal with all the normal hazards of the road while pulling over, plus the hazards it is itself creating by acting abnormally.

Don’t have a ref but heard that it’s been safe for quite a while but they keep the pilots around due to consumer fear rather than actual improved performance. Curious if anyone can confirm.

If you can design the product and environment to fit automation, then automation can be quick and effective.

The less you can change about the product and environment, then automation run slower and less effectively.

Air liner operations could be automated, but the minimum equipment list would be more stringent, the destination airport would not be able to take any equipment out of service for maintenance, visibility minimums would increase, takeoff and landing operations would require more slack time.

Besides all of that, the owner of the airplane would still want to have some crew on board.

In short, it's not worth it yet.

===

There is also the paradox of automation: Automation generally makes the hard parts harder and the easy parts easier.

No. Airliners can't even take off on their own yet, and are only allowed to auto-land with zero visibility at a few dozen airports when the pilots, plane, and runway are all current/recently checked.

Look up the Airbus ATTOL project's first automated takeoff a few years ago.

Also, there's virtually no automation when it comes to interacting with ATC.

What would ever make you think that?

In an automotive setting you can almost always safely decelerate to a full-stop, put on hazards and call it a fail. Good luck trying that in an aircraft over urban areas.

I also feel like the demand is way, way lower. A pilot can't be that large a % of the cost of a flight. Maybe if we lived in the jetsons era.

The problem is actually safety. As automated systems get better, the pilot is left with not much to do, and has to maintain vigilance while being really really bored. It is almost better to have fewer automated systems and give the pilot more things to do during the flight so it is easier to keep them paying attention, or all automated with no human pilot to mess things up.

"Autopilot" already exists when it comes to flying.

Sure but it's not autonomous in the sense of Waymo (ie, driverless)

Landing can be: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland

In fact, it's pretty routine. Don't have the source at hand, but somewhere around 1% of all landings (at airports with ILS) are autolands.

I think it was Boeing that even requires at least 1 autoland per plane every 30 days or so.

You can find videos of this on YouTube. Completely hands-off.

Yes but it should have been obvious that in the context of Waymo + SFO, the implication was autonomous flying of commercial airlines.

Yes, but autopilot usually just keeps the plane flying in a straight line at some specified altitude, which have been around since 1912. It isn't full self-flying (although we definitely have drones that can fly themselves already, so that tech already exists).

That's an oversimplification of autopilot systems. They can follow flight routes, avoid traffic (TCAS), even auto land to name a few.

Mine as well, and I was crossing SFO off the list of airports I'd connect through.

Cool, I wonder if this means they will finally start letting foreign visitors also use the app. I'm an American living abroad now for many years, and I was initially super excited to try Waymo in LA and SF this summer when I visited with my family. Unfortunately they only make the iPhone app available via the US app store, and while I actually have a US credit card that I could have in theory used to make the switch, Apple makes it an absurd pain to change your region as they require you to both a) cancel any existing subscription AND b) wait until they all expire. Most tourists have it worse as they have no option to even switch in theory.

Huh, as a Brit, I was able to use Waymo just fine on this summer on my Android device.

See also: garden-path sentence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence)

This is actually why you have "Naval aviators". To maritime people a pilot means something else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_pilot

The flying kind is a license, not a permit.

There are driver's licenses and learner's permits. This could be the flying equivalent.

lol deniable demand-gauging :)

Honestly I think the title should be edited. The first time I scrolled past it I had the same obvious interpretation.

As a European, I can’t help but feel a bit sad that we’re missing out on the driverless side of things. It seems like most of the meaningful deployments are happening in the US (Waymo, Cruise).

I’d really like to see either a Waymo competitor emerge in Europe, or even Waymo themselves operating here. The regulatory environment is obviously more complex, but it’d be great if we didn’t end up years behind on something this transformative.

Cars of any sort, self-driving or otherwise, do not solve traffic any more than Uber does because you need to have enough of them to get everyone to and from work at basically the same time. Trains are the only way to address traffic. Trains are self-driving. Europe already has the better self-driving system. It's just boring because self-driving is much easier when you build the road to support it instead of removing all constraints and adding GPUs, lidar sensors, cameras and an army of fall-back operators in overseas call centers.

If trips that require a car are prohibitively expensive (in money, time or convenience) without owning a car, more people will own a car. Once you own a car, it's often much easier to use it for trips that you would otherwise do without a car.

Reducing the (perceived) need to buy a car, e.g. by making it easy, cheap and reliable to get from A to B using a self driving car service, will reduce the number of people who own a car and thus the number of car trips.

Self driving cars could work with trains to do the desired location to the station bit that has always been a bit awkward.

Trains are all very well but they've been around nearly 200 years and have yet to bring on a traffic free utopia.

Trains will fairly unreliably take you from one place that is not your home, to another place, which is not where you want to go, at a time that is probably not exactly when you wanted to arrive. Freedom of movement is incredibly important, and trains are very rigid in this aspect.

I think self-driving cars can still be beneficial even if they don’t help with traffic problems. They shouldn’t require so much parking in desirable areas (a separate problem cars cause), for example, and they could have a big impact on the lives of some disabled people.

As mostly a cyclist (I drive roughly 10% of my transport, the rest is biking and transit), my experience with self-driving cars is that I feel much safer riding in front of them. They're less likely to pass dangerously close to me to drive past me, they're less likely to tailgate me, they're also less likely to just drive me into the door zone, sidewalk, or a parked car. I'm a very confident cyclist but I suspect newer, more skittish cyclists would agree.

If you can restrict certain roads to autonomous cars (or heavily limit the number of non-autonomous cars) then you don't need to build as much bicycle infrastructure (a buffered lane is probably all you need, as opposed to bollards or true grade separation) and I can guarantee you more folks will feel comfortable riding bikes. This is aside from how frequently human-driven cars end up colliding with, damaging, or blocking non-grade-separated forms of transit.

> It's just boring because self-driving is much easier when you build the road to support it instead of removing all constraints and adding GPUs, lidar sensors, cameras and an army of fall-back operators in overseas call centers.

I do bike advocacy so this kind of rhetorical gotcha can make me feel good and hit the upvote button but in reality city councils and other elected officials are mostly people skeptical of the benefits of bicycling, worried that buses/trains would place too high a tax burden on their constituents, or deep down convinced in their lizard brain that Americans are too carpilled to ever do anything else. If you can change this by running for your local council, do it!

Don't get me wrong, we need more bike infrastructure and we needed it yesterday. But anything helps. I'd love to see certain corridors of SF be restricted to transit, autonomous vehicle, and cyclist usage only. Market is already only for transit and cyclists so there's precedent.

This gets brought up a lot but I think it's missing some key points.

1) Being driven around is the best transportation mode for most of the US. It's very comfortable, private, fast, and point-to-point. It stops working well at very high density, but that level of density is only seen in a few places in the US. I'd like more people to live in dense areas but for the foreseeable future self-driving vehicles are going to be the best solution for most trips in the US.

2) At very high densities it's true that cars can move fewer people per hour per 10-foot lane than other modes and so you run into congestion. But that's measured with the current vehicle fleet and human drivers. With high autonomous vehicle penetration you could implement congestion pricing that encourages high throughput vehicle design. That means private vehicles that are much much smaller (think Isetta-like design) that can follow at very short distances. Along with the elimination of on-street parking we could see a many-fold increase in road throughput.

3) At even higher density levels the same congestion pricing mechanism would encourage people to use microbuses that would operate similarly to Uber Pool. Compared to today's busses they would have equal or greater throughput, be point-to-point or nearly point-to-point, dynamically routed, cheaper to operate and faster.

4) At the very highest density levels it's true that nothing can match the throughput of the subway. As others have mentioned, AVs are a great way to connect people to the subway. Many trips intersect with the highest density urban core for only a fraction of the journey. More people would take the subway if they knew they could get to and from the stations easily and quickly. AVs let you mix-and-match transport modes more easily.

Cities should start engaging with vehicle manufacturers to start getting these high density vehicle designs worked on and figure out the congestion pricing mechanism to properly incentive their rollout.

Bicycles are another way to address traffic, because they take up so little room and can be essentially free and often more convenient for shorter trips. Of course that means you have to have bicycle infrastructure where you don't have to run serious risks to your life every 3-5 minutes during your journey.

Trains are not panacea some people here keep thinking they are. You would need to have train stops every few hundred meters changing it into some city subway or tram, interconnected with dense and fast local public transport.

I live in Switzerland, the place for trains, efficiency and its small and dense, an ideal situation right. Tons of people use trains every day, tons of people also bike for closer distances in good warmish weather but still highways are chock full and getting fuller every year. Public transport for out-of-city commuters is simply slower, often much slower.

This morning I was considering taking a motorbike to a train station that is 5km away, then 40 mins trains and 10 minute walk to work. I took the car instead for a change, I was faster despite having to cross the very center of bottlenecked and car-hostile big city (Geneva) in top rush hour. 65 mins door-to-door via public transport vs 45 in car. That's one way, meaning 40 minutes of my private life daily saved that I can spend ie with my kids and not staring in the phone or out of window.

Normally I take the motorbike if weather permits, if not I take the public bus to the train, adding additional 15 minutes each way. That sucks pretty badly. I doubt other countries have this figured out better, and not everybody can or wants to live in city centers, especially when raising small kids. We did it for 10 years, had a work commute of 5mins via escooter, but I rather have current commute and live and raise kids in small commune next to wild forest and vineyards than that.

All above is usually much worse in many parts of US.

My experiene in UK cities is that Taxis really come into their own at night when:

- The trains often aren't running (and there may not be the volume of passengers to justify running them)

- The road are empty so traffic isn't really an issue

Trains still don't solve last mile transport for most people (even in places with robust transit systems)

Self driving cars might not solve traffic problems but they could greatly reduce them. Problems like traffic waves and gridlock go away when all cars are driving themselves.

Do I really care about traffic if I’m not the one driving in it? I guess if you’re looking at highly disproportionate delays but I really wouldn’t care about traffic otherwise.

I disagree that self-driving won't reduce traffic, at least from the perspective a Virginia resident. Commuting into D.C. is in theory very quick, except for when there are crashes. Crashes double the commute time, and there's _always_ a crash. This is pretty much the only source of traffic in my area. I think the primary benefit of self-driving would be lowering the crash rate, and as a side effect traffic.

> Trains are self-driving. Europe already has the better self-driving system.

Well, I'm in Europe and it ain't here. Waymo can't get here fast enough.

This statement is mostly wrong.

Cars as a shared service (shuttles, Uber, Waymo) absolutely solve traffic compared to personal vehicles. Shared cars have much higher utilization and require a lot less space.

I agree that trains are a fantastic way to move large groups of people, but a world with more shared cars (which may be brought about faster with Waymo) is a good thing for most cities.

They replace taxis and potentially postal and trucking applications in future.

It’s certainly not a replacement for mass transit. US is sparsely populated compared to Europe and mass transit don’t work as well in the suburbia. That said, I do see many transit oriented development in SF Bay Area where high density buildings are being built near transit stations.

The elephant in the room is rideshare commuting is for extremely rich people. Who else can afford the probably $75+ a day it costs on a two way commute?

> Trains are the only way to address traffic.

And how do you get to the train when it's too far to walk and you're not a cyclist?

Yes, driverless does not solve any real problem. When I come from work, I still have to sit in a car. Yes, I can work instead of drive, but that's only in theory because in practice the G-forces won't allow me to.

A robot cook, however, __would__ solve a practical problem for me.

Anyway, this whole approach is not even solving first-world problems (many families struggle to pay for a car), but it's solving the upper-1% of first-world problems, maybe. Except those people can afford to pay drivers who are now out of a job. So yes, what is this even solving??

Why do you hate buses?

Mobileeye in Munich https://www.mobileye.com/blog/self-driving-robotaxi-sixt-ger...

Moia (Volkswagen) in Hamburg https://www.moia.io/en

Mercedes autonomous driving https://group.mercedes-benz.com/innovations/product-innovati...

Yes, but they said "meaningful".

There's some self driving tech being developed in Europe, but AFAIK nothing is at the current deployment level of Zoox or Aurora, let alone Waymo.

USA is huge. This is happening in a small part of the USA in a very limited fashion. It's not like the USA has driverless cars everywhere, 99.9% of the population never saw one.

I'd guess Waymo covers 5% now. San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, Austin, and Phoenix are ~10% of US population. Waymo service areas don't cover all of those cities.

Considering tourism and people living just outside service areas who see them but don't get to use them (which includes me sadly) I would not be surprised if 10% of population had seen at least one.

About 43% of the US population lives in 25 metro areas so Waymo doesn't have to be in a lot of places to have a big impact.

“More than 50 cities across China have introduced testing-friendly policies for autonomous vehicles.”[0]

Europe could do the same but they have other priorities.

0. https://restofworld.org/2025/robotaxi-waymo-apollo-go/

UK:

>pilots of self-driving taxi- and bus-like services will be brought forward by a year to spring 2026, attracting investment and making the UK one of the world leaders in this technology

As an American with extensive time spent in Europe, I’d much, much rather have European-style metros and tramways than self-driving cars.

Waymo (though a technical marvel) is a bandaid over our inability to build and maintain public infrastructure. Be sure to cherish what you’ve got.

European cities have lots of taxis. Same with Asian cities. They will obviously have AVs in the future. I'm not sure why you think they should be mutually exclusive with transit.

Many American cities don't have the population density to make metros and trams economically viable. And those few cities that do have comparable density (New York, Chicago, namely) do have metros.

Public infrastructure has high overhead costs, and low population density means there isn't enough ridership to make it viable.

American public transit construction costs are now ridiculous in terms of both money and political capital. Even somewhere as sprawled as San Jose now requires well over 1b/mi to build a subway under; BART could've acquired an entire autonomous driving company for the cost of the Silicon Valley extension.

As an American, I think you’re naive and short-sighted.

You must realize that, at some point, self-driving cars will be ubiquitous. Maybe not for 50 years, but they will be.

What you’re actually saying is “I’m virtue-signaling with Europe because that’s what the cool kids do”

EU’s amazing infrastructure is the Minitel that will prevent it from getting the internet of self-driving.

Subways don’t solve last-mile problems or trucking.

Apollo Go (the Chinese Waymo owned by Baidu) is planning to start road testing in Germany and the UK in 2026, in partnership with Lyft.

> I’d really like to see either a Waymo competitor emerge in Europe, or even Waymo themselves operating here

I think you’ll see American and Chinese self-driving kit in Europe once it matures. It’s just easier to iterate at home, so while the technology advances that’s where it will be.

What do you think degrowth and decline means? Vibes and essays?

It's not just driverless cars either - delivery drones (e.g. in China), a lot of health tech (as they have more check-ups in the USA), Starlink, Neuralink, a space programme, etc.

> As a European, I can’t help but feel a bit sad that we’re missing out on the driverless side of things

I don't know about other countries, but Spain will probably be one of the last ones to get it, thanks to the Uber-powerful (heh) taxi driver lobby

I think navigating European roads is a massive step more difficult than US cities. They've got wide lanes and a really strict grid layout generally. At least in the European cities I'm familiar with we have much narrower lanes, residential areas with parking turning 2 lanes into 1, old towns, and layouts that are completely unpredictable. Maybe I'm wrong but I think this is the bigger hurdle than regulation.

Maybe there just not enough interest? After all there is good public transportation (especially rail), increasing biking habits and just loving the driving experience.

In Switzerland the Airport has 28 trains per hour that connect it directly to almost every part of the country. In addition to that there is a tram line and many bus lanes.

But I guess in SF they can take a taxi that might be a little cheaper because the company operating it is fine with losing 100s of millions a year.

Waymos aren’t even really cheaper than uber lyft and traditional taxi.

I don’t think wages in europe are high enough to sustain this model business very well. When you track waymo deployment its in placed where plenty of high income price insensitive people are to be found.

Cruise is basically winding down. Tesla is the other major competitor

JYFI Cruise is “dead” after their SF accident 1-2 years ago. I believe GM has even written down their Cruise investment.

Elections have consequences. Your lawmakers won’t even let us use browser cookies without permission.

I don't remember any plans Waymo has announced for Europe, but they are testing in Japan.

Mercedes is quite close. They have demonstrated commercially viable Level 3 ADAS systems.

Regulation and under investment

Those darn regulators, don't they realise companies just want what's best for us?

I'll trade you your train network for our self driving cars!

Wayve seems promising. I heard they want to open up in London soon

Youre missing something very important. Train infrastructure in the US sucks. Not the case in the developed areas of Europe.

My personal use of a car has declined pretty dramatically the past few years. Trains are pretty good here in the UK.

US and China basically.

I feel the opposite. Self driving cars seem like a meme because driving is fun and trains are better. If either of those premises is not true in your geolocation then self driving is not the solution either.

Cruise has been out of business for almost a year I think.

> It seems like most of the meaningful deployments are happening in the US

Because they are.

Across Europe you can randomly encounter a major town with a taxi cartel still blocking rideshares, as if its 2012

we have effective public transport in most major cities!

you have buses and trains, you don't need waymo

Cruise is dead.

Wayve?

One thing you are missing out on: mandatory loud (97 to 112 db) 1000 Hz audible beep when the vehicle reversing, oh so slowly, such as at the recharging station. Also, constant shop vac five horsepower vacuum cleaner sound. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

Oh wait, you thought those would be in the middle of nowhere? Nope.

https://www.karmactive.com/waymo-charging-noise-blasts-112-d...

It is not mandatory that backup alarms be 97 to 112 db. They only need to be "above the surrounding noise level". The loud beeping alarms were installed on most vehicles because most of them operated at loud constructions sites, so needed to be louder than that. it was easier to just buy the loud model to CYA, even if it was a delivery truck. They also don't need to 1000 Hz or to actually beep. White noise backup alarms are allowed, and in use in many delivery trucks now, and make a sound attenuated above 4000 Hz, which is much more localized and dissipates over much shorter distances. Waymo could absolutely have installed 85dB white noise alarms but chose to install 112dB beeping alarms. This is not a regulation problem.

Unless and until those noises that you mention are as annoying as those made by present time ICE vehicles, your point will remain irrelevant.

Don't worry, we're missing out on a lot of "progress" on this side of the ocean thanks to Trump's dislike of wind farms and RFK Jr's whole anti-vaxxer thing

We can’t even use Waymo when we land at SFO for a visit

Isn't that what this article is about?

As a fellow European I'm quite happy that these driverless POS's are not here. I can't even understand how int the hell are they legal over there.

I'm surprised and incredibly impressed at this announcement. It seems trivial, but the general feeling in the industry has been that SF would fight tooth and nail against robotaxis at SFO.

Probably because SFO felt the heat after Waymo acquired SJC approval quickly: https://sfstandard.com/2025/09/05/phoenix-has-airport-robota...

Most likely both agreements had been in negotiations for a while and not something they just pulled together last week in response to SJC, although it's possibly they could have used it as leverage (hey we've talking to SJC ...)

the major difference being that SJC is easily accessible by surface streets whereas SFO mostly isn't.

I genuinely think things have changed with Lurie as mayor and 6 growsf endorsed people on the board.

It's going to take a long time for SF to overcome the reputation it built for itself in the 2010s.

Recent changes in the composition of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (i.e. Peskin being out of government) may have something to do with it being easier than expected.

The NIMBY/landlord supervisors who controlled SF, such as Aaron Peskin and Dean Preston, are now a thing of the past.

Peskin is now reduced to showing up at protests with signs saying the rent is too low.

https://x.com/agarwal/status/1966365908085125384

The setup at SFO is currently quite annoying (Lyft/Uber require you to walk 5 mins to the garage roof, and drivers need to park/wait 5-10 mins away, so there's always a substantial delay). Taxis get the privileged parking spot immediately outside arrivals, but if it's busy you might still need to wait a bit.

I've been wondering for a while why Waymo can't offer a semi-managed solution to SFO to dynamically manage load, have just the right volume of cars inbound, maximize parking utilization, etc. with all of the nice intelligence that an app-based system would enable.

It feels like you should be able to have a buffer of cars waiting right at the curbside, and automatically refill that buffer on short notice depending on observed or predicted demand.

As an Uber rider, I actually love the SFO setup. The walk is short enough, there's actually enough space even during most busy times that there's no crazy honking of drivers trying to get in or out of the pickup zone.

Compare that to the mess that is Uber pickups at JFK, where you have big delays _and_ very poor traffic controls in and out of the pickup zones.

LGA does it way better, but the walk is a bit longer.

Taxis have a powerful local lobby; Google/Waymo doesn't.

>I've been wondering for a while why Waymo can't offer a semi-managed solution to SFO to dynamically manage load, have just the right volume of cars inbound, maximize parking utilization, etc. with all of the nice intelligence that an app-based system would enable.

Uber could in theory do all those same things too, right?

To some extent, but I think it’s easier to have fully automated buffering if you physically control the cars. Eg you can have backup vehicles parked indefinitely nearby if you want, whereas there will always be some unpredictable churn from human drivers eg unexpectedly clocking off.

No idea if these are first-order effects in practice.

I’ve never had to wait more than 5 minutes at SFO I don’t think and the system seems ok to me

counter point, I love the taxi setup, I wander out, no pre-planning, walk across the street with my headpones on and get in a car, my company pays for it. I suually pay more on uber or lyft, and it's faster and I don't do anything but walk from the plane to the car

I did this in Eastern Europe one time, ended up being made to pay 60€ for a ride that's 10€ on a ridesharing app (even with the "licensed taxi" option...) When there's reasonable price controls it is convenient though

Waymo got approval for SJC last week. That probably accelerated approval for SFO, which had been stalling. Nice.

When they get clearance to drop people off at the main terminals, that will be more convenient. Pickup at the terminals is harder. There will be a need for a staging area somewhere in the parking structures.

Few major airports I've been to allow Uber/Lyft anywhere near the pickup area, so many fliers are already accustomed to walking a quarter mile or so to their rideshare. But their inability to use the drop-off area is a new inconvenience, and I can see it limiting the appeal.

Waymo will probably get access to the drop-off area after a while. One step at a time seems to be the Waymo way.

Waymo at airports could work really well with automatic dispatching. They already have an app running in the customer's phone. It should be aware of when someone with a reservation gets off an airplane, and how close they're getting to the pickup point. With good coordination, as the customer heads to the arrival lanes, a Waymo pulls out of short-term parking and heads for the meeting point.

A few more years, and humanoid robots will put the luggage in the trunk.

> Few major airports I've been to allow Uber/Lyft anywhere near the pickup area

Few major airports have Waymo at all. Phoenix has allowed pick-up at the airport for ages. (EDIT: Never mind.)

What airports are you flying out of? Every major airport i have been to in the last year has a dedicated rideshare pickup lane.

Uber black and at least lyft extra room have no problem picking you up at the arrivals

It’s wild that $goog is so undervalued (p/e 27) given Alphabet owns Waymo in addition to everything else, and yet Tesla is so overvalued (p/e 243!!!) despite zero Robotaxis in the near (or far) future and lackluster sales.

Goes to show empty promises and fraudulent showmanship sell better than actual working products that people use.

GOOGL is up like 25% over the last few weeks after they resolved the DoJ lawsuit about Search bundling. Clearly there were some investors who thought that was a material risk to the business.

Tesla is clearly a meme stock though, and an example of how the market can say irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

I finally capitulated and bought a few shares of TSLA, shorting wasn't working.

If you buy Alphabet stock you're betting on the whole company doing well.

Google makes around $300B a year. Uber's entire business makes around $50B and that took a decade. Waymo would have to become a major business to move Alphabet's stock price in the near term.

Considering Waymo is very likely losing money, experiment very slowly with scaling up, and still raising billions in private capital outside Google... idk. Doesn't seem as simple as buy $goog in 2025.

Otherwise I agree Tesla is a bit of a meme stock.

I think Waymo has huge potential for being much larger than Uber - people are willing to pay more compared to ordinary uber drive just to avoid dealing with taxi drivers and tech will only get cheaper.

Don’t forget that Waymo will always be a much lower margin business than search! Setting aside the decades of R&D expense, those cars require purchasing, maintenance, warehousing, etc.

I don’t think Waymo is very likely a losing money experiment. I give them a 50% chance to be successful within the next 10 years. Successful being that self-driving cars are able to operate in 50% of the world/terrain types/region types, probably within another 10 years to scale up.

Tesla has 1/3rd the market cap.

If Waymo is a rounding error to GOOG, it's basically a rounding error to Tesla's implied valuation.

So what is Tesla valued in then?

Clearly not car sales, profit, and especially growth in either of those segments.

xAI is supposed to be where all the AI is.

Where is it?

Uber making 50B, probably means Uber is paying drivers around 200B or higher. So that is Waymo’s potential revenue in the long term as it releases in most ride share markets. I think it’s under 1B revenue now, which just shows how much growth ahead is possible. Even if we think Uber will be at least 50% market share in the coming decade, at least 100X growth is left for Waymo. This also completely ignores Waymo creating latent demand, which is wholly possible. I would for example trust a Waymo to drop my kids everyday over an Uber.

Uber also has to pay drivers. How much of that $50B goes to the operator?

Meanwhile, for Waymo, a good chunk of it is profit (after the fixed cost of the vehicle, of course).

Indeed. The richest showman that ever lived and successfully duped both liberal and conservative population and politicians. Well deserved I say.

Wild that people will call the founder of SpaceX a "showman"

Deceiving people doesn't mean you deserve your gains.

Largely because investors fear that Google's new products (especially AI) will cannibalize its massively lucrative ads business.

Fear is a bit of an understatement

but if they're google's products how would they cannabalize ads biz. would revenue not just shift? or do you believe ai search will be overly adopted but not as profitable?

Stocks are narrative-driven, and sometimes this aspect swamps the "fundamentals." Keynesian beauty contests all the way down.

But the earnings of Waymo (or hypothetically Tesla) are nothing in Alphabet as a whole.

If you get a great deal on your house and then massively overpay for some avocados, the latter's going to barely move your overall wealth.

I believe TSLA also represents their humanoid robot segment with some questionable addressable market definitions done by investment analysts. I believe it’s overvalued but they are a forcing function for the other tech companies to push ahead

Waymo is a small portion of Alphabets business, while cars are a massive portion of Tesla's. If waymo was seperated out from Alphabet maybe it's p/E would be that high.

PE has been irrelevant since the dotcom crash if not sooner. us equities are no based in reality

Google is just not a risk taker these days. You don't risk you don't get rewarded.

Tesla is literally operating a robotaxi service.

They're operating a Robotaxi service, not a robotaxi service.

If I create a shuttle bus service for my neighborhood and call it the "Space Shuttle", I am not operating a space shuttle.

A whole 15 cars, with "supervisors" in the drivers seat!

And only last week did they even open up the waitlist to non-influencers.

Unsafe at any speed

They've managed to automate it but reduce the labor costs by zero in the process. Now that's innovation.

Because some people read beyond headlines and realize that Tesla will most likely dominate with Robotaxi. Their traditional consumer vehicle revenue could pale in comparison. And Optimus could be another order of magnitude larger.

That’s the optimistic bull case. It’s not impossible.

Tesla will be able to scale Robotaxi much quicker than Waymo can scale.

Why? In principle the basic Waymo technology could be adapted to work on any modern vehicle. They aren't dependent on Jaguar manufacturing capacity to scale up.

There are about 1,500 Waymo cars in existence, versus about 7,000,000 Teslas in the last seven years.

But there are 0 Teslas that are as effective at self-driving as Waymo, so they're still ahead.

The Coca-Cola company sells even more units than Tesla, but if those units don't drive themselves they're moot to this discussion.

Same could be said about Tesla when it started.

Overvalued by traditional (PE) means. I've ridden in Waymo (50+) and Austin Robotaxis (12). Tesla has Waymo beat in terms of human-like feel, interior features (sync to your own Spotify, Youtube, etc). When Tesla removes the passenger seat monitor, scaling will happen much faster than Waymo... Tesla just received the initial license for driverless Robotaxi in Nevada. Tesla also produces more Robotaxi-capable Model Ys in ~6 hours as Waymo has cars in service (in total).

Tesla's self-driving technology is a joke compared to Waymo's and the Tesla brand is extremely toxic now. I see from your other comments that you're big on Tesla (own several and have a son who works there) but as an unbiased observer I cannot fathom them winning this market.

> When Tesla removes the passenger seat monitor

This is a huge jump, possibly still 5+ years away.

> When Tesla removes the passenger seat monitor

They literally moved that monitor to the driver's seat! Progress, indeed.

Waymo does not have YouTube sync, but they do have Apotify sync.

I drove for Uber/Lyft back in 2020 and let me tell you, SFO is a nightmare. I missed a turn once and had a passenger trying to make a flight furious at me. I quickly figured out there were a group of drivers who specialized in SFO and amatuers like me should avoid the place. When Waymo announced San Jose I thought ok, that makes sense because SJC is easy, but SFO? Wow, I'm impressed. I hope it goes to plan.

Those turn offs for specific terminals are very small and easy to miss.

Nothing more rewarding than a company working hard and seeing real-world, first of its kind results in action. Makes me feel giddy about a company again like peak tech back in the 2010 era.

Congrats to the Waymo team, I’m sure this was a huge milestone internally.

Looks like this Kiss & Fly area where pickup will be is at the car rental center.

Oh, this makes a bit of sense. The Avis/Budget fleet team will be part of managing the vehicles, so they can be quickly cleaned and fueled up when they slide into the airport, too.

https://www.avisbudgetgroup.com/avis-budget-group-announces-...

(Dallas, but they do this in other cities, too.)

huh. I didn't even know this existed.

Same. I go to the rectal car center at least 4 times each year. I just was there on Saturday and had no idea either. Still don't know what it is other than Waymo pickup.

What's even better is the variety of names this thing has. I'm my area, it's the "cell phone lane"

Does this mean they'll be able to take the freeways to get there? Surface streets from SF to SFO would be pretty slow.

I'd hope so. As an aside, I wish Waymo was more transparent on the app that their cars are not allowed to take passengers on the freeway. I was unaware of this restriction when I booked a ride from SF to Burlingame last month and I was stuck in a Waymo for an hour going down residential streets!

Doesnt it show the route and the ETA before your book the ride?

They have had permission to be on freeways for a while [0], although so far they have only done employee testing (I believe)

[0] https://sfstandard.com/2024/03/01/waymo-san-francisco-cpuc-e...

I wonder how that'd feel. I took a Waymo in SF last fall and I was pretty impressed. But it was also slow city speeds. I wonder if it feels different going at freeway speeds with "no one" at the wheel.

While the margin of error is much lower on a freeway due to the speeds, other drivers are generally a lot more predictable (also in part due to the speeds).

The surface street route that bypasses 101 near Brisbane is surprisingly often faster than 101.

People love crashing there.

From the article “ Pickups and dropoffs will initially start at SFO’s Kiss & Fly area – a short AirTrain ride from the terminals – with the intention to explore other locations at the airport in the future.”

They're still working on freeways, doing employee riding testing.

Waymo already had the permit, but they're just being (overly) cautious.

Hopefully Waymo does a better job than SF Uber drivers. I can't tell you how many times I've had drivers make a wrong turn trying to find their way to the pickup point.

Seems like Tesla keeps talking big, while waymo conquers city by city.

LOL

Boy, if they could actually navigate terminal traffic, I’d give ‘em true self driving.

SFO traffic is not bad at all. Send them to LAX and we're talking.

Its not true self driving until the Waymo asks if dropping you off at arrivals is ok.

I'll be honest, I think LAX's traffic is better than SFO's. It feels like there's a lot less spaghetti at LAX, the shortcuts are reasonable, and you don't have separate international and domestic loops.

JFK is probably the 10th circle of hell

Send them to BOS and we're talking

JFK has entered the chat

Maybe, but this approvals only allows them to go to the rental car center, which is quite far from the terminals. The passenger will need to take the air train to the terminals.

They already do in PHX.

I wonder what the ultimate price of this service will be compared to alternatives.

It will remain higher for a while. From reporting I have seen, they are close to maxing out their vehicles, and many people prefer it to other options, so are willing to pay a premium. As long as that is true, it's going to be priced as a premium product. It won't be until fleets grow significantly in size and/or another driverless taxi service enters the market that we will maybe start to see prices driven down closer to marginal cost of a ride.

-edit- multiple other comments apparently disagree with this. I'll defer to people who actually use them over the reporting. Odd that there is that disconnect though.

I know this is only a single data point, but I recently took one in Hollywood. Uber Lyft quoted $33 and Waymo was $20

It's also higher right now because it is a novely. Plenty of people are booking it just to say they rode in a Waymo and take pictures. When that wears off they will have to start competing strictily on price and wait/ride time.

Yeah they need scaling and competition before the prices get lower. As long as supply is saturated with demand and nobody else is on their level, there's little reason to lower prices.

On other threads I've seen conflicting anecdata regarding pricing being higher or lower than an Uber ride. That's not too surprising since the supply and demand variables are going to be different for Waymo.

Their goal is to have lower cost Hyundai models hit the market though, right? So the Jags probably remain the premium/higher cost option.

In my experience so far, Waymo costs about the same as an Uber when you take into account tipping, but takes longer (they're not yet doing freeways). With the addition of SFO to their zone, I can't imagine freeways are far behind, because getting from the city to SFO without using the freeways would be... a novelty.

That's not been my experience... 90% of the time when I check, Waymo is still a good 20-50% more expensive in SF, when comparing to a tip-included Uber or Lyft price.

I've used Waymo countless times in SF. It's typically 15% cheaper than an Uber/Lyft and trip time/wait are generally the same. I much prefer the Waymo.

I've never encountered it being cheaper, what hours do you generally use it?

Self driving taxis are fundamentally much cheaper to provide.

- No driver to pay. - Smaller simpler car. - Can drive 24h a day. - Needs much less parking space.

But fully realizing these benefits is probably a decade away.

Cheaper than uber rn. Long term once they own the market? Too much.

They still have to compete with alternate modes of transportation such as buses, bikes, trains, e-scooter rentals, self-owned cars, Uber with human drivers.

If it would be "too much", then there's no reason why taxis (incl uber/lyft) wouldn't be too much today.

from what I heard, the intention is to make it much more affordable than it is now. I don't remember the source right now but I did think it was a blog post or something like that.

I think if it's affordable then people will easily take that. instead of drinking and driving at night or other unsafe activities. if it's affordable then people can just take a waymo home and then back again to get their car when it's safe again.

If Waymo can pull off airport pickups smoothly, it might shift how we think about edge entry to city traffic. Most cities still struggle with that "last mile" problem maybe self driving fits perfectly there.

Can you handle parking structures? I heard a lot of the autonomous cars were using 2D maps and couldn't handle multiple levels. Haha! This was just a year or two ago.

Google maps has been able to figure out parking structures for me recently. Not sure what technology is involved (gps isn't great for vertical) but it's clearly possible.

one of the waymo depots in SF is a multi level parking building

Google has been collecting data on building interiors for several years now. Not just parking structures. This data is currently used in streetview. Google's geospatial data is unequaled and maybe a bigger advantage than is readily visible.

Do they need a "map" of a parking tower though, just like how humans don't exactly need Google Maps inside of one? I feel like this is something self driving + vision (exit signs and arrows) can handle

Do taxis need to park tho?

I mean, depending on the situation, of course. Do taxi drivers in US drop people right in the middle of a busy street?

One concern I have is how the user data collected by self driving cars will be handled. Companies like Waymo likely hold even more data than Uber. If such data is truly used in sensitive locations like airports, I hope there will be clear and transparent mechanisms.

That's great to hear

The title makes it sound like GA but it's still in testing

Waymo ride costs are getting really expensive in SF.

Not sure if you have a recent side-by-side example with Uber, but this seems like it would have to happen if the demand is there. How else can you offer a quality product (i.e., car shows up in a reasonable amount of time) if you don't have enough cars to satisfy the demand? Pricing is the primary demand lever.

There's so much polarizing opinion on Tesla's offering and whether they'll get to Waymo's level sooner than later, but this seems like it's going to be or already is a huge issue for Waymo where they can't manufacture the vehicles fast enough to satisfy the demand as they expand both locally (because they capture more of the market) and into new geographies. Will they try and acquire a manufacturer? I don't think that's economically feasible for Waymo (Geely market cap is $25b, per Google snippet fwiw), and obviously being in the car business is different than autonomous, but I'm sure Google would bankroll a purchase if they thought it was the right growth strategy.

I guess Tesla, even if their autonomous is on par with Waymo tomorrow, also has to manufacture the fleet, but it seems extremely beneficial to have that capacity in house vs. relying on partners. Maybe I'm wrong and it's not that much of an advantage, but at first glance it would seem to be.

The CEO of Uber was quoted as saying Waymos complete more rides per day than 99% of Uber drivers. He didn't give a precise ratio but this makes me think that hundreds of Waymos can replace thousands of Uber drivers and their cars.

CMs like Magna have the flexibility to manufacture, at the low end, hundreds of vehicles, and at the high end thousands. I doubt Waymo will ever make their own vehicles. They are already working with Toyota on adapting Waymo technology to privately owned cars. That implies mass production. That would be a supply of vehicles that are probably simple to adapt to robotaxi use.

@harmmonica I do. we prefer to use Waymos in SF but Uber has been a lot cheaper in the last six months or so regardless of time of day... Also saw some Zoox self driving boxes on the las vegas strip last week but no one seemed to be using them.

Waymo is a premium ride product that happens to be self driving.

I think self-driving is what makes Waymo premium. A Waymo is a better experience because the Waymo is safer and smoother driver than any human could ever be.

just use Robotaxi. 1/3 of the price, sometimes less

What's that? An app? I see a Chinese app of that name in the android play store, but it only has about 1k downloads

How much per mile? For some recent example rides, let's say. One I took was exactly $2 / mile but not in SF.

For now...

Not sure why you're downvoted. I've tried Robotaxi a few times and has been great. They still have a safety driver these days and wait time is a big high though.

I think this is a really exciting development for Waymo and the future of autonomous transportation. Imagine the next steps; waymo flights

Man, I’m flying into SFO next week. Wish this was already available; I’d take it in a heartbeat.

Too bad waymo is more expensive than uber most of the time

Why is that too bad?

But still no Waymo app in the European App Store for iOS.

hilariously needlessly complex expensive solution because "anything but viable public transport!"

There is viable public transit from SFO to the city. Both Caltrain and Bart have decent connections to the airport.

Practically, travelers with heavy check-in bags prefer taxis. Public transit can't be the answer for everything.

Without heavy check-in, transit is a great choice. Alas, some problems remain. Many residents consider BART unsafe. Frequency is pathetic for a major subway line. BART is unusually expensive ($14! - 6$ + 6$ + 2$??) and last mile connectivity is bad.

On the topic of cost, other airports that are on the transit corridor (LaGuardia NYC, Boston Logan, Ronald Reagan Washington) cost $3-4 for the trip. EWR & JFK are more expensive, but they're often faster than taking a taxi which allows them to compete on pricing.

at first I thought they were doing those cargo quad copter things...

Waymo has planes too??

Looks like this would (eventually) include service to not just San Francisco, but also the Peninsula (Silicon Valley) via freeways.

I certainly hope so. And if yes, I imagine people are gonna start using it as a transfer point, to take a Waymo from the peninsula to SF.

Is Waymo L5?

L5 means the car can drive everywhere a human can. Waymo's refuse to drive outside of a constrained area, and occasionally stop to ask for assistance, so that makes them L4.

This whole autonomous driving levels kinda muddies the waters. Some would argue this isn't full L4 even. But it is a self driving car in the places it offers its services.

What would be the argument that Waymo is anything except L4?

No, L5 is a car that can drive itself anywhere in any conditions.

I think there's an implicit "where a decent human driver could drive safely" for L5, otherwise you get increasingly ridiculous scenarios like, "can Waymo drive safely in a whiteout blizzard?" or "can Waymo safely escape an erupting volcano??"

is waymo really that good???

how good it compared to Tesla FSD/Robotaxi ???

haven ridden in both a few times, yes, Waymo is head and shoulders better. It's smooth and I don't think I've ever seen any false alarms or behavior that made me feel unsafe in a Waymo, while I've had a few scary or annoying situations in the Teslas. I took a 6-minute robotaxi in drizzling weather where it parked in intersections twice because the cameras were obscured. Meanwhile Waymo can drive perfectly in heavy fog.

Both the Waymos and Teslas have that central display that shows you what the car sees (pedestrians, dogs, traffic cones, other cars, etc). The Waymo representation of the world reaches pretty far is is pretty much perfect from what I've seen. Meanwhile the Tesla one until recently had objects popping in and out.

Neither is perfect, of course; both will hesitate sometimes and creep along when (IMO) they should commit. But they're both still way better in that regard compared to the zoox autonomous cars I see in SF.

Tesla doesn't have a real robotaxi yet, they're still in the testing/prototyping phase where they need a safety driver or safety monitor in the car.

They might be close to a real robotaxi in some areas, but it's hard to say until they actually pull the trigger on removing any employees from the car.

Waymo cannot scale. So for most people it's irrelevant.

Tesla FSD makes driving 90% less taxing mentally. It does 99.9% of the driving perfectly. And its getting better. We are quickly approaching a situation where people who don't drive Teslas are like people who cut their grass with Sickle as compared to people who have driving lawn mowers

There are many cars on the market with ADAS. Tesla is competing with those companies, not with Waymo, which operates in a completely different market.

https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/advice/cars-that-are-alm...

tesla robotaxi is worse than waymo was 3 years ago when I was a tester

Until just now I had no idea Tesla had a taxi service. Otoh I've seen hundreds of Waymos in SF and the west side of LA.

An interesting thing about this is that there are fewer than 1000 Waymos in the SF service area. I don't know today's total, but I'm pretty certain that there are fewer than 5000 Waymos in existence. Maybe as few as half that.

Some months ago Waymo claimed to be providing 250,000 rides per week. If the fleet size was 2500 at the time, that would be 100 rides per vehicle per week.

Wait, what is special about driving to/from airports?

What’s special about the airport is that the City of San Francisco owns and regulates it (as opposed to the streets that are regulated by the state CPUC), and the Board of Supervisors previously were regulatory captured by taxi medallion owners and Teamsters union (https://missionlocal.org/2024/12/waymo-rolls-toward-san-fran...). Specifically, Aaron Peskin (BoS supervisor from 2001–2009, 2015–2025, and board president for the last 2 years) said, “Their entire M.O. is, ‘The state regulates us; we don’t have to work with you, we don’t have to partner with you.’ My response is: There are things we do control. Including where you charge your cars. And the airport. What I intend to do, is condition their deployment and use of the airport property on their meeting a number of conditions around meeting this city’s minimum standards for public safety and transit.” https://missionlocal.org/2023/11/waymo-rebuffed-by-sfo-sf-gu...

I’d say it puts a lot of Uber (and similar) drivers at risk because airport rides are a good source of income. Waymo undercutting them will reduce the amount of passengers available for pick up. Not saying it’s a bad or good thing. Just that it has real world impact on people and the economy.

Usually you'd have to take the BART one stop then the waymo, which seems to be a common tourist attraction for fresh deplaners. Perhaps the airport was afraid without that step of friction, too many people would try this and cause a waymo-jam

Isn't it by far and wide the most common use of taxi services? It certainly is basically the only time I ever use one.

Waymo getting into that space seems like a pretty big step up in market penetration.

Hope you like traffic!

How would this reduce or increase traffic? The demand is staying the same.

Presumably the increased supply of "drivers" going to SFO will lower rideshare prices for everyone and make public transit less appealing

Waymo can deliver as many rides as Uber with a small fraction of the number of vehicles.

And they're all electric.

surge pricing FTW!

Can't wait to argue over outsourced call centers to a non human while being stuck in traffic in a dangerous situation

I see a monopoly about to take shape. DOJ/FTC is sleeping on breakup schemes. USDOT should start government/private ventures in this space.

What kind of monopoly?

They are cornering rideshare and automatic vehicles. They are the sole provider of an automatic vehicle.

Nobody needs this. This is, in all likelihood, just private enterprise developing technologies for automated warfare.

Have you priced this out compared to a regular taxi or Lyft?

It’s waaaay mo’

Inside SF, my experience is that Uber and Lyft are ~10-15% cheaper than Waymo, but that's before tipping. I don't have to tip a robot, so they work out to nearly identical prices.

You don't have to tip an Uber or Lyft driver either.

>I don't have to tip a robot

Now that tips are tax free, it's only a matter of time before some clever SV accountants figure out how make everything a tip.

You also don't have to tip a taxi driver. They get paid for giving rides, it's not an extra service.

Who at Waymo can I speak to about using Waymo’s as an affordable housing solution? I work in commercial real estate and have a handful of affordable projects I am involved in and believe this to be a very interesting solution no one is talking about.

Cause what this country needs is to automate away even the gig economy jobs that are out there. Let's keep making a few people rich and screw all the normal people out there.

Why the downvotes? That jobs will be lost is fact. Does this represent an increase in wealth concentration? Obviously. Is that a net bad? I don't know, let's discuss instead of silencing people.

Okay what're the odds on how long it is until there's a stray Waymo on the tarmac. Hopefully with enough warning to divert any planes about to land on it.

Zero. For the same reason there are never any stray civilian cars on the tarmac.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/surveillance-video-show...

https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/delivery-driver-secured...

Lower than a random human doing that.

Waymo are toast, Tesla will out scale them in months if not sooner. They can't compete on costs, 100k plus for an ugly Waymo vs < 40k for Tesla model Y or cyber cab.

Waymo makes level 4 autonomous vehicles. Tesla makes level 2 driver assistance systems. Completely different markets.

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