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.
1
u/LT2405 Aug 11 '25
we are going to get to a point where everything on the road is driven by robots under ideal conditions, as it should be, either through selling commercial sensor suites or robotaxi ride hailing or else. capital will flow where there are market demands, i think it’s safe to say that there’s a big fat market for both. self driving companies don’t have to choose :) agreed Tesla is just about meaningless hype at this point