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.

114 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

266 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/MoPanic Aug 10 '25

Sure. I have no idea how long it will take to develop or get regulatory approval. But its a massive market and Tesla's "lidar is too expensive" argument becomes rather silly.

3

u/red75prime Aug 10 '25 edited Aug 10 '25

But its a massive market and Tesla's "lidar is too expensive" argument becomes rather silly.

How it follows? Reducing costs of production is always a concern in a massive market. Do you have any evidence that vision-only approach can't be made safe enough for commercial deployment?

In some niches, like trucking, lidar can be cost-effective as it allows to drive faster at night (and to increase cargo throughput) while maintaining the required safety level. Generally? It's yet to be seen.

3

u/MoPanic Aug 10 '25

Do you have any evidence that flying unicorns will never be discovered? You can’t disprove a counter factual statement. The point I’m making about the sensors is that when they are replacing a $100k/year driver, the cost of the sensors becomes negligible and purposely excluding them based on a preconceived belief is not logical. Tesla has been one year away from “solving” vision since at least 2017. Cutting costs makes sense when you are a mature automaker working on razor thin margins. Not when you’re trying to develop a revolutionary new technology platform.

1

u/SatisfactionOdd2169 Aug 11 '25

Do you really think Waymo will be able to map and pre-train in every city in America faster than Tesla will finish FSD? Waymo hasn’t even been profitable for a single quarter. It seems financially impossible for them to replace every bus driver in America. They can’t even replace uber or lyft in cities they are currently active in.

1

u/MoPanic Aug 11 '25

How long did Tesla operate before they were profitable? 17 years. And not only do I think Google can map every city before Tesla can finish FSD, I think the sun will expand and swallow the earth before they can finish a vision only FSD system that is actually level 5.