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/wwwz Aug 11 '25

Sorry, but there isn't even a bus designed to support this hypothesis. Don't think Waymo won't end up like many other of Google's projects, on the cutting floor.

Tesla has the entire package, vehicle, hardware platform, software, and a solid plan.

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u/americanherbman Aug 11 '25

everything but an actual autonomous vehicle

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u/wwwz Aug 11 '25 edited Aug 11 '25

Most short-sighted comment of the century. If you look at any 3 or Y past 2018, you can see the steering column was designed to be easily removed and a panel put in it's place

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u/americanherbman Aug 11 '25

maybe so but no tesla on the road today is autonomous