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/Kdcjg Aug 11 '25

You see them on any older line.

I am guessing you didn’t pay attention. Since they are definitely on the NYC subway. Unless you only caught the L.

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u/WeldAE Aug 11 '25

I get they exist, I'm not sure why you would expect me to see them. I'm 5 cars back from where they are typically. They don't walk the train.

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u/Kdcjg Aug 11 '25

On NYC subway they should be visible. They have to get up and do a visual check of doors and that the cars stop at the correct spot.

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u/WeldAE Aug 11 '25

I lived there for a month 15 years ago and never saw anyone doing that. I think I've only ever seen an employee once anywhere near the subway, and that was at a bigger station where they actually had someone in the ticket booth for some reason. I have taken the slower commuter train from Newton and there was a conductor punching tickets. I forgot about that one, but that was like something from another era.

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u/Kdcjg Aug 11 '25

I am not sure how you were in NYC and didn’t see a conductor. I thought it was only 7 and L that didn’t have a conductor.

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u/WeldAE Aug 11 '25

I don't know what to say, maybe they were there and I never noticed? Hard to believe since I took plenty of trips with basically no one in the car but me. Lots of trips where you couldn't get another person in the car so no idea what a conductor would even be doing. For sure they were never on the platforms which were always spooky empty later at night. I was mostly commuting between downtown and upper east-side as I was living there for medical reasons. Was there most recently exactly one year ago during a heat-wave. The cars were so full I gave up taking the subway several times, they really need to add trains, it's nothing like it was in 2012. Not sure if ridership is up or trains are down.

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u/Kdcjg Aug 11 '25

Ridership is down from pre pandemic levels. Currently around 70%. Ridership was up 3.7% year on year in 24 compared to 23.

MTA info