Great piece. Just took my first Waymo out in SF. I wonder if part of the plan is to start getting people acclimated to Waymo while people can ride in Jaguars (such a nice ride), then slowly over time, the cars will get grosser, eventually people will pay more for "premium" cars that have been cleaned more frequently while others will pay less for a car with ketchup all over. Surveillance and security cost money -- I'm sure those charges will get passed on to users somehow.
100% - I’m sure there’s some row on some spreadsheet somewhere that has an avg cost per incident and assumes some incident rate that factors into the overall financial model.
I strongly suspect that Alphabet finds ways to monetize AVs beyond running a vehicle for hire service; AVs are generating tons of data as they operate and Alphabet’s core competency is collecting, organizing, and monetizing data.
If that actually plays out that way, the costs from passengers damaging vehicles might get cross subsidized by some other (non transportation based)revenue stream.
Great piece. Just took my first Waymo out in SF. I wonder if part of the plan is to start getting people acclimated to Waymo while people can ride in Jaguars (such a nice ride), then slowly over time, the cars will get grosser, eventually people will pay more for "premium" cars that have been cleaned more frequently while others will pay less for a car with ketchup all over. Surveillance and security cost money -- I'm sure those charges will get passed on to users somehow.
100% - I’m sure there’s some row on some spreadsheet somewhere that has an avg cost per incident and assumes some incident rate that factors into the overall financial model.
I strongly suspect that Alphabet finds ways to monetize AVs beyond running a vehicle for hire service; AVs are generating tons of data as they operate and Alphabet’s core competency is collecting, organizing, and monetizing data.
If that actually plays out that way, the costs from passengers damaging vehicles might get cross subsidized by some other (non transportation based)revenue stream.
The “newer, cleaner” differentiation is already happening on Lyft