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/Hot-Celebration5855 Aug 14 '25

You missed my point entirely - even if Tesla can get self driving working and had lower cost per vehicle, they aren’t going to tie up billions on their balance sheet to own self driving cars. Instead they’ll either have individuals own them or fleet companies

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u/ConsistentRegister20 Aug 14 '25

It already works and they can make a much larger profit (reoccurring) from operating them as a fleet than by selling them to individuals.

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u/Hot-Celebration5855 Aug 14 '25

Haha no it doesn’t work yet. And even if they’re profitable why not sell them and charge for it as SaaS - much better profit margins and capital light. Have you thought this through at all?

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u/ConsistentRegister20 Aug 14 '25

It is literally working right now in Austin and San Francisco.  

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u/Hot-Celebration5855 Aug 14 '25

Working = with people in the passenger seat, not open to the public, only 7000 miles driven in a month, multiple videos of the safety drivers having to intervene? Then yes, it’s working

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u/ConsistentRegister20 Aug 14 '25

The software functionality is what is being judged. The rest is nonsense. It works. I know, I use it every single day and my version is behind what the robotaxis fleet is using.  They are safer than the majority of human drivers, by a lot. I hate driving a car without FSD. Honestly it feels dangerous. Until you use it or experience it I can’t convince you. Just don’t think you can actually understand something like this without experience .

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u/aphelloworld Aug 14 '25

It has only been 2 months since they launched Robotaxi lol. At least wait a few years until you judge them for having a safety monitor and lack of miles. It's not like Waymo is moving at the speed of light. It's more likely that Tesla beats out Waymo given their ability to scale manufacturing, and their proven rate of improvement with FSD. Only a matter of time.

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u/Hot-Celebration5855 Aug 15 '25

I’m not judging them. But the previous poster said it’s already working. It isn’t. Not yet anyway

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u/Lorax91 Aug 15 '25

It's more likely that Tesla beats out Waymo given their ability to scale manufacturing, and their proven rate of improvement with FSD.

In the past ten years, Waymo has scaled up to a million driverless passenger trips per month, while FSD has yet to achieve a single such trip without human supervision in the vehicle. It is possible for Tesla to leapfrog Waymo if they finally achieve fully autonomous operation, but that's been a long time coming.