HN Reader

Interesting that Waymo has relationships with both Uber and Lyft now. They can play them off each other for future expansion opportunities, while continuing to learn the nuances of the high-scale rideshare biz from them.

Is this the first time Waymo has partnered with Lyft? I’ve only heard of Uber partnerships before? From what I can find, previous Lyft collaborations were only pilot testing, not commercial rollouts.

This feels like an inflection point.

We're now at San Francisco, SFO airport, Austin, Nashville, and NYC, is that right?

I strongly suspect Waymo has hit break-even. If Google's published numbers on rides per week and fleet size are accurate, and the estimates of price per ride are close, expansion isn't going to be capital constrained.

I wish they would target mass transit not rideshare cars. A bus with this technology could immediately run a lot more frequent with shorter buses, and because the route is fixed they don't have to verify the entire city, only the roads the bus will travel on. Fix route buses running at high frequency is the key to getting people to ride mass transit, but it isn't affordable because drivers are so expensive if you can even find them to hire.

What a time to be alive. 3 companies competing for what might be the next trillion dollar business.

- Waymo has the advantage of launching sooner but has much more expensive vehicles which will eat into margins.

- Tesla has the advantage of full vertical integration owns their hardware and cheaper cars but also trying to do this with vision only.

- Zoox has the advantage of building purpose-built autonomous vehicles from the ground up with Amazon's deep pockets behind them, but faces the challenge of manufacturing at scale for a novel vehicle.

From market standpoint I am curious if Google or Amazon is willing to acquire Lyft for the tech and customer base.

Lyft is a good distribution channel for their self driving car initiatives with good coverage, Uber is too expensive at this moment.

Uber and Lyft are sitting pretty for the moment. They don’t own any cars anyway, now they don’t even have to deal with drivers. Also I am glad google finally found a GTM strategy for their tech. They are building these machines themselves though. These are expensive and cost a lot in maintenance, wonder how the numbers look for them

“As families and businesses move to Tennessee in record numbers, our state continues to lead the nation in finding innovative solutions to transportation challenges," said Governor Bill Lee.

Innovative. That must have felt nice to claim

Is there any hope of actually being able to fully own a self driving vehicle as a consumer? Seems that a concerning majority of the autonomous driving conversation is framed in the context of ride-sharing.

Nashville's airport suffered gridlock yesterday: https://fox17.com/news/local/what-caused-the-over-14000-vehi...

Not, Lyft, Flexdrive. Flexdrive is a fleet management company which Lyft owns. They have the things Waymo needs - parking lots and vehicle maintainers. Waymo doesn't need the rideshare service and Lyft app.

In San Francisco, Waymo has already passed Lyft in number of rides, and is projected to pass Uber by the end of the year.

Oh yes please, just a little closer! Come on bring it to Talladega AL where tons of blind people live!

Meh, I'll stick to driving my own car or renting one. The last thing I want is paying for the "privilege" of being rated by the driver or spied on my an autonomous car.

I have a feeling Nashville normies are going to be super psyched having to drive behind these things.

Why would a company like Lyft/Uber partner with Waymo at this point? That sounds like doing a deal with the competitor who _will_ completely kill them off in the future.

Nobody needs this.

This is incentivized as private enterprise developing autonomous warfare tech.

Don’t rule out Tesla’s Robotaxi. I’m 10 rides in (Bay Area— around SF proper), and it’s clean, cheap, and efficient. As good or better than Waymo.

IMO: - Tesla is pushing Waymo on pricing and service areas - Tesla will drop the safety monitor in the next 6 months**

**I say this as a FSD subscriber on my own car and seeing the arch of progress, albeit with a software branch that’s supposedly 3-6 months behind Robotaxi’s