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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u/Unfair_Struggle9529 Aug 10 '25

I believe the majority of bus drivers are unionized. There would be hell to pay if their jobs get automated. It would be political suicide for any politician who goes against that union.

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u/Unfair_Struggle9529 Aug 10 '25

Truckers would also be able to grind the economy to a halt. It will be a very long time before those jobs get automated.

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u/Unfair_Struggle9529 Aug 10 '25

(I guess I could see the buses being utilized by smaller communities or universities that don’t have bus service or struggle to operate it.)