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Robot(taxi)s Are Coming! No seriously!
Uber & Lyft Earnings Under Pressure from Waymo, Robotaxis. (Business Insider)
Waymo’s robotaxis are undercutting Uber and Lyft prices in Phoenix while matching quality. It’s no longer just about autonomous technology — it’s about making the economics work at scale. This is a sign of the times as more AI-powered machines become part of our lives.
Key Points:
- In Phoenix, Waymo’s self-driving rides are consistently priced 20% to 30% below traditional ride-hailing services, while maintaining comparable wait times and service quality.
- The expansion to Los Angeles marks a crucial test for Waymo’s scalability. L.A.’s complex traffic patterns and diverse environments present new challenges. Yet, Waymo’s confident pricing strategy suggests it has cracked fundamental operational efficiency issues.
- Waymo still employs remote operators and maintenance staff, the ratio of support personnel to active vehicles continues to decrease. This improving efficiency ratio, combined with the elimination of driver costs, creates a compelling economic model that traditional ride-hailing services will struggle to match.
Some thoughts:
The parallels to the early days of smartphone-based services disrupting traditional taxis are evident. But this time, the disruption feels more substantial. It’s hard to revert to regular taxis after using Uber, and the same is true for Waymo. Unlike the questionably sustainable subsidies that fueled early ride-hailing growth, Waymo’s price advantage stems from fundamental technological capabilities and operational efficiencies. This convergence of declining technology costs, improved operational efficiency, and scalable infrastructure, when achieved, is almost always disruptive. In the recent past, Amazon Web Services exacted such outcome from traditional data centers and their suppliers, for example.
The question isn’t whether autonomous ride-hailing will become mainstream, but how we’ll manage its impact on urban economics and employment landscapes. Will cities adapt their infrastructure to optimize for this new paradigm, or will autonomous services have to conform to existing urban frameworks?
The real question is: What are the societal implications? The job and income loss at the driver level extract dollars from the local economy and have knock-on downstream effects. What does it do to the local tax base or local spending? When technologies are this intertwined in offline societal reality, we need to be proactive in imagining future scenarios. Quite a few questions need serious consideration and discussion!
Read on Business Insider: Uber & Lyft Earnings Under Pressure from Waymo, Robotaxis.
November 29, 2024. San Francisco
3 thoughts on this post
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On one hand we have a certain political party trying to increase the population by blocking access to certain, sometimes lifesaving healthcare procedures, and on the other hand we have tech trying to eliminate jobs with driverless taxis. Where and when do these people finally meet? I’d like to listen in on that conversation.
The last time I called a cab, the one yellow cab still in the area was specializing in airport runs and by appointment only. I miss the conversations with some of those drivers I had over the years. They were a slice of America unto their own, mostly because they had immigrated here and took pride in their cars, knowledge of the area, and becoming Americans.
I have used Uber once, it was fine, the young woman driving was not much for conversation, and I think a little put off by my friendliness. She was totally reliant on her car’s navigation system to get through town and didn’t take the standard taxi short cut to avoid traffic. The fare was still cheaper, so I guess that was all that mattered.
Robert,
I have lived in SF long enough that I would remember the names of drivers, cab company dispatchers, and even their birthdays. I attended the wake of one of the dispatchers who died of cancer. I missed these interactions with Uber, but the speed and convenience trumped any human connections.
Fast forward to today, I talk to way more immigrants driving Uber or Lyft cars, but that is going to go away soon with these Robotaxis. While it seems nice today, in a couple of years we are going to miss the “human” touch, much as we miss the familiar drivers in “cabs.”
Cycle of tech, convenience and our need to be human — it’s very complicated.
History is a study of the violent use of force: war by any other name. Wars are won by the side with the most production — think WW2 where the USA war machine outproduced the Germans and Japanese on every scale (shipping tonnage, trucks, guns, tanks, bullets) it wasn’t even close. USA will cease to exist if “un-friendly nation-states” are allowed to get a head start on the most disruptive force (autonomy & robotics) to the labor markets since the industrial age. If we were worried about how many blacksmiths and buggy whip makers would lose their jobs; we would still be walking everywhere we go except city-to-city buggy travel and in the cities, we’d be walking through a foot of horse-sh*t in the street. We’d be fetching water by hand from the well and washing clothes by hands. The price of progress is disruption.
Society not only survived the great labor displacement of the industrial age — it thrived! We will thrive in the future too.