Good piece - as a fellow former Uber/Lyft driver, you would not believe the things passengers will try to do in the car when there's a human driver in the car. I think this problem is going to be 10x worse with no driver. Especially when Waymo starts to go mass market and get to the 'average rideshare customer'.
I think we're already seeing some of this play out and it's a tricky one for Waymo to navigate. Human drivers can handle small cleaning tasks inbetween rides but Waymo can't go back to the depot unless it's something serious and even then, they will lose money due to the lower utilization, and likely need to charge a cleaning fee.
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.
Good piece - as a fellow former Uber/Lyft driver, you would not believe the things passengers will try to do in the car when there's a human driver in the car. I think this problem is going to be 10x worse with no driver. Especially when Waymo starts to go mass market and get to the 'average rideshare customer'.
I think we're already seeing some of this play out and it's a tricky one for Waymo to navigate. Human drivers can handle small cleaning tasks inbetween rides but Waymo can't go back to the depot unless it's something serious and even then, they will lose money due to the lower utilization, and likely need to charge a cleaning fee.
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