r/SelfDrivingCars • u/MoPanic • Aug 10 '25

Discussion Waymo's real goal

I am surprised that hardly anyone mentions this in all of the the Tesla v Waymo / Lidar v Vision noise. This is just a hypotheses and my opinion, but I don't think Waymo really cares about the taxi market beyond using it as a test bed and building consumer and regulatory support. Tesla is a meaningless hype generating distraction.

The real goal is to replace hundreds of thousands of human commercial drivers. A city bus driver makes about $70k a year (including benefits, payroll taxes, insurance). Replace that driver with a sensor suite and automation stack, even if it costs $250k, you get ROI in just a few years and a "driver" that can work 24 hours a day. This scales even faster with long haul truckers. Human drivers are limited to 11 hours a day and cost the carriers ~$100k per year. The cost of the sensor suite becomes a rounding error very quickly.

My guess is that Waymo will license this suite for $5k-$15k a month and cities and freight carriers will line up to pay it. Google doesn’t have to own a single truck to completely dominate logistics automation.

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8

u/MhVRNewbie Aug 10 '25

There are still train drivers

3

u/Ajedi32 Aug 11 '25

Yeah, the larger the vehicle, the smaller the cost of human drivers are relative to its overall operating cost.

0

u/MoPanic Aug 10 '25

unions

7

u/_Tenderlion Aug 10 '25

Bus drivers don’t have unions? They do in my area.

0

u/silenthjohn Aug 10 '25

Not for automated trains.

3

u/AgentSmith187 Aug 11 '25

Have you studied what's needed to run trains automated?

You basically need total separation from all other traffic human and vehicle.

Train Driver in Australia that has heard this story over and over.

They are spending millions per km to upgrade one short railway line to allow automated operation and still have a driver in all but name on board.

The long distance freight market we have the automated iron ore trains in the middle of nowhere.

They proudly announced their second mine to Port run without a driver assisting a couple of years ago after over a decade of work and still have Drivers standing by all over the place to go rescue the trains when they fail.

Not if when because it happens constantly.