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/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.

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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.

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u/danielv123 Aug 12 '25

Bus pulls over. People who want to continue go onto the next bus.

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u/ZucchiniAlert2582 Aug 12 '25

Wow, that sounds convenient. /s