HN Reader

No product had such a fast transition from novelty to "omg i never want to interact with a human again". I feel about 100% less stressed and happier using a waymo or riding motorbike or bicycle next to a waymo than with human drivers. I hope this next phase will bring availability and prices down. We need this in europe.

why is Tesla much higher? I thought Tesla's market cap was because of the self driving feature.

I love, love, love Waymo and am so excited about their success. Uber and Lyft were the heroes for a while, but became the villains. If Waymo is available anywhere I need a cab, that is absolutely my first choice, even for the premium cost.

As someone who lives in a city with a lot of Waymos (Atlanta), I do not understand why anyone considers these things more than an early test or a novelty.

From an outside perspective, they're constantly obstructing traffic and driving in erratic and confusing ways. It's gotten to a point that if I see one ahead of me, I'll turn down the next block and change my route to avoid being behind it and dealing with whatever slowdown its about to cause.

I took one once via Uber with some coworkers and it was also jarring to ride in. I'd rather take my chances with a random human.

I do not think driverless will solve the main transportation problem we are dealing with as a society: we are giving up more space for cars, space that humans cannot use. We build more highways, widen roads, increase speed limits, and expect humans to stay out of this space. I live in a 100+ year old neighborhood. The roads were built for horse and buggy and streetcars. Now I have to beg to cross the road. My neighborhood has been effectively chopped up. I question whether I should walk to another block because I'll have to deal with crossing the street. Quiet houses now have the constant buzz of cars either from the ever-present highways or from the 40+ mph traffic right outside their doors. Driverless cars will not solve these problems. Fewer kids will die, partially from safe software, but mostly because they won't be able to leave their bubble without being strapped down into a car.

Wow that is headline carnage. What does it mean?

Edit: there is a paywall in my country. Why downvotes? I’m just curious.

Just don’t take one if another one is operating nearby. If they see another waymo, having passed the insecure emotional Turing test, they get self-conscious and wander the neighborhood backstreets until the other one has dropped off its passengers.

(Just experienced this multiple times in Phoenix. It’s impressive at navigating and braking, but not rational planning or flocking.)

It seems like a fair valuation to me. I can see a path for them to approach or surpass Uber's revenue (~$50B) in the future, and I think their technology and brand are actual moats in comparison to all other driverless systems out there.

FWIW Waymo may have been "seeking" this deal when Bloomberg wrote that article but FT reports that it's already closed.

I presume if you invest in Google you are indirectly (but significantly) invested in Waymo, like it is with Anthropic?

Waymo is the best service I've used in many, many years. The jump from Uber->Waymo is similar to the quality jump from Taxi->Uber 12 years ago, but I don't see an obvious way for Waymo to get enshittified.

> The parent company would provide about $13 billion to the robotaxi firm, while the rest would come from others, including new investors ...

No IPO for us little people

I'm pretty sure this is the first big post about Waymo on HN, the comments are fun to read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168888 :)

Why does Google need outside investors? Is it a play to get a “serious” valuation since it would be vetted by outside parties?

I guess Im questioning why Waymo doesn’t just IPO, or raise 100% private raise by Google.