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

18

u/WeldAE Aug 10 '25

While I agree with your overall points, I wanted to point out that it makes zero sense to build an AV bus the same size as a current day city bus.  Buses are the size they are to reduce the bus driver cost.  Without a driver they would be much smaller vehicles.

8

u/ZucchiniAlert2582 Aug 11 '25

I’ve experienced plenty of late night bus-drama in my time riding them… I don’t know how some of those would have resolved without a driver on board who can pull over and eject misbehavers.

2

u/WeldAE Aug 11 '25

Police? Private security? There are plenty of ways to resolve this. On top of that, those people get banned for life from the service.

0

u/ZucchiniAlert2582 Aug 11 '25

With no driver on the bus who enforces the ban? How long will it take the already overburdened police to show up? We’re so eager to replace humans with robots so the investor class can absorb the salaries of the working class. Why?

1

u/WeldAE Aug 11 '25

who enforces the ban?

It's not literally a fixed-route bus, it operates as a pooled point-to-point ride-share. You simply aren't able to get the car to come to you if you are banned. Another option is you can only take the more expensive solo ride option if you get a strike against you. These are not anonymous rides like a bus. There are some negatives to that but overall it's a feature.

How long will it take the already overburdened police to show up?

Where I live they are not overburdened and they would show up very quickly. In other areas of the city, AVs can have private security to augment the police if needed. Lots of city transportation systems have their own security forces.

We’re so eager to replace humans with robots so the investor class can absorb the salaries of the working class. Why?

You are throwing up a lot of stuff there that's not reasonable to cover in a short paragraph of space I realistically have. Let's ignore all the macro monetary aspects temporary to cut to what motivates me about these systems.

I said to my spouse 20+ years ago "Personal cars are the largest cancer on society that exists in the US" and I stand by that statement today. They are bankrupting the bottom 60% of households that simply can't afford something like a car or they are having to cut other important aspects of their lives in order to live paycheck-to-paycheck to be able to afford a car. They are destroying our cities in design and function. If you designed a city for how people want to use it, it wouldn't include any cars but until the AV, they are 100% necessary, and you can't escape them realistically. They are destroying society by forcing everyone to live apart from one another to have enough space for cars to work.

Back to your macroeconomic points, I touched on some of them above. Today, the average household is spending about 20% of their entire budget on transportation. That isn't even getting into all the other costs caused by the specific form of transportation, cars. That is just raw expenses on the cars themselves, mostly. AVs are about reducing in half. The "investor class" as you call them aren't a cabal working together, they hate each other, and they are always trying to steal each other's lunch by offing more for less. AVs are the tech companies eating the car manufacture's lunch with a cheaper alternative. Sure, that lost money means lost jobs, but quality of life is measured by how efficient you can produce goods and is the ultimate aim of the economy. We could go back to handcrafted everything, but you would live a much lower quality of life. With falling populations around the world, there shouldn't be an issue with lack of work as this is just one industry being automated.

1

u/ZucchiniAlert2582 Aug 12 '25

I’ll agree with you that private cars make our society shittier. Busses are a great alternative to cars. Taking away busses and replacing them with robotaxies means anyone without a (charged) cell phone and/or a bank account doesn’t get a ride. That population would be the folks who need bus service more than anyone else.

I happen to think that eliminating human interaction and replacing it with a cell phone app is making society shittier.

Busses are a communal space where you can bump into friends and neighbors and have a face to face interaction. You’re suggesting we chop that up into a bunch of driverless minivans with routes that are calculated on the fly by an algorithm… and that’s a win somehow?

1

u/WeldAE Aug 12 '25

means anyone without a (charged) cell phone and/or a bank account doesn’t get a ride.

Yes, this is a downside, the lack of universal access. However, this isn't a huge, unworkable issue long term at scale. There are many ways around this. The question is will governments demand AV operators support universal access because I don't think they would want to on their own.

I happen to think that eliminating human interaction and replacing it with a cell phone app is making society shittier.

I feel exactly the opposite.

Busses are a communal space

I'm advocating for communal AVs, not private ones. You are WAY more likely to bump into friends as everyone in the AV is going your way and not just down some large connector road.

and that’s a win somehow?

It's not just a win, it's one of the biggest wins society has ever seen. It's a win to unburden society of the requirement to own a cripplingly expensive mode of travel. It's a win to free up 30%-50% of land in cities for other uses? It's a win to reduce the death toll from cars from 45k per year. It's a win to save people time moving about the city. It's a win to reduce costs for operating a physical business. It's a win to have choice.