Comment by Animats

2 days ago

Waymos will get cheaper to make as they scale up. The Ioniq version [1] costs less to build. All the sheet metal and mechanical mods for Waymo are done at the Hyundai factory in Georgia.[2] Waymo just mounts the electronics.

Jobs at the Hyundai factory start at $23.66/hour, with reasonably good benefits.[3]

[1] https://waymo.com/blog/2024/10/waymo-and-hyundai-enter-partn...

[2] https://www.hmgma.com/

[3] https://careers-americas.hyundai.com/hmgma/job/Ellabell-Prod...

100 comments

Animats

Reply
1024core  2 days ago

The other day I almost got ran over by an old lady in her old Volvo wagon at a stop sign. She seemed to have gotten confused a little and was turning left but couldn't figure out the right move to make. People behind her honked and she decided to just go for it. I happened to be in the crosswalk and just happened to look over at the honking, and saw her coming, so managed to jump out of her way.

She was easily over 90, if not over 95.

People like her could really benefit from a personal Waymo. Just sell a car with FSD built in, at the level of a Waymo, and bam! That would make so many senior citizens' lives easier!

  • kanbara  2 days ago

    this is 10000% the wrong approach— the approach is to build better, more walkable cities, with better zoning, and public transit so elderly or disabled people aren’t left out of society.

    these people shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a car; to me one of the biggest annoyances with american life

    • icelancer  1 day ago

      Between inventing better FSD cars and rezoning cities / completely upending urban lifestyles, I think the first one has a better < 100 year time horizon while we push for the second one.

    • hn_go_brrrrr  2 days ago

      My father can barely walk a block before he needs to sit and rest. Your plan would not work for him. A more walkable city would be great for me, someone who can walk well. Him? Nope.

      3 replies →

    • happyopossum  2 days ago

      So tear down every city in the country and rebuild them all from scratch, then force the ~45% of people that don’t live in those cities to move there.

      And that’s better than mandating a small percentage of the population use FSD cars?

      Not sure I like the autocratic tone of that plan

      2 replies →

  • wileydragonfly  2 days ago

    Hell, it’ll make MY life easier. Can’t wait for the day where I can do whatever the hell I want while my car drives itself. Affluent seniors that shouldn’t be driving are an obvious market and it would have been helpful for those in my life, too.

  • chipsrafferty  2 days ago

    Why sell a car when you can charge per ride?

    • jgerrish  2 days ago

      Well, you wouldn't have to sell the car. You could also setup a licensing / loan / dedicated car system.

      It would work well for local municipalities that want to provide low-cost door-to-door service for the elderly.

      We have a bus service here, The ART, and a dedicates "paratransit" bus service that provides door-to-door service to eligible riders.

      And a couple private large-scale developed and managed neighborhoods that have driverless non-automated (remote controlled) transit systems.

      If you know a large portion of your riders have disabilities, dedicated buses or vans make sense.

      I'm sitting here advocating for this, and it's a great service that I'm glad they have it for those in need, and yet I need fucking plywood for hurricanes myself.

      Yeah, it is Florida. But honestly, the transit system here and bike infrastructure development and traffic planning is good.

      2 replies →

    • Nasrudith  2 hours ago

      For the same reasons why you accept a lower price when selling in bulk basically. There are fewer overhead costs for you to deal with. You have to deal with the risks and the slower payout and money now is worth more than money later, the very premise responsible for loans.

    • sagarm  2 days ago

      It's not so much "why sell the car" but more "who is going to buy this car?" Plus, without maintenance the self-driving capability will probably degrade and become unsafe.

    • 1024core  2 days ago

      Supply. There may not be enough Waymos sitting around to satisfy all of the demand at a point in time.

harmmonica  2 days ago

We're far from them doing it, but I have to imagine at some point Waymo, assuming they survive, will operate similar to Uber and Lyft in terms of pricing vs vehicle type. They have to realize how critical consistency-of-ride is so I'm not suggesting they'll have tons of options, but they will "have to" tier their offering lest someone else comes along (assuming the tech becomes more widespread) and offers a tier they don't offer. At the least I would think they'll end up with a base ride (like an Ioniq or even something extremely basic), an Ioniq or Ioniq+ type in the middle and then some kind of larger, more luxurious option. I mean this as it relates to rideshare because I'm sure Waymo has had plenty of internal conversations about the various verticals they can eventually operate (shipping, mass transit, etc.).

  • Animats  2 days ago

    There's a larger Ioniq 9. But the real future is probably a 2-seater with no steering wheel. That handles most usage.

    • crazygringo  2 days ago

      That's actually a really interesting question. Because it's not necessarily about handling most usage, but also about handling peak usage. Is it worth the cost to keep everything 4-seater if that means they can all enter "carpool mode" whenever required at times of peak demand?

      Because once they become ubiquitous, I suspect the vast majority will be operating in carpool mode at rush hour. Most people won't be willing to pay 4x to get a private vehicle if they're by themselves. Especially since the more vehicles there are, the more efficient carpool mode becomes for everyone.

      2 replies →

    • harmmonica  2 days ago

      That's really interesting because I hadn't actually thought about that in-depth before. I think Tesla's robotaxi prototype was even a 2-seater. My knee-jerk reaction to your comment was "no, 2 seater won't happen because the incremental cost of the additional seats and doors is immaterial to the overall cost of the car."

      But then thinking more about it I thought of how great we (all the people who like Waymo) think it performs around bikes and pedestrians. So now I agree with you directionally but you might not be taking it far enough. Once (if?) autonomous vehicles rule the road, and they're known to be safe, the future will likely be the broad spectrum from autonomous buses (on the large side) to super-cheap, bike-like vehicles (on the small side) that cost way less than a car. For a single occupant, if you knew another vehicle wasn't going to kill you, wouldn't you take an e-bike (with a cover and basket on it?) for short trips if the fee was proportionate to the cost of the vehicle? I would. Assumes lidar shrinks I guess and that automated kickstands are a thing, but that seems tractable in the years to come.

      2 replies →

    • kelnos  2 days ago

      This makes lots of sense to me. A 2-seater is often a hard sell for a private owner (even one with no kids), but I'd bet the majority (or at least a plurality) of taxi/ride-share trips are for one or two people.

    • tgsovlerkhgsel  18 hours ago

      Or a 4-seater with two rear facing seats. The design space gets bigger quickly once you no longer have to account for a driver and their field of vision, especially if the cars usually travel at city speeds where aerodynamics don't matter as much.

  • Muromec  2 days ago

    It's not critical if you will still pay for shit service especially if competitors are like that too.

passwordoops  2 days ago

>Waymos will get cheaper to make as they scale up.

Meaning their profits will rise as they inevitably increase prices

  • silvr  2 days ago

    Minority view here I'm sure but maybe profits are a just reward for inventing the future - this is literally science fiction come to life

    • MegaButts  2 days ago

      Self-driving cars are cool but I'd rather have good public transit. These vehicles clearly have utility beyond just public transit, but I'd rather they be an edge case rather than considered a main solution. So yeah, from my perspective the problem is being focused on profits instead of trying to solve the real problem with solutions that have already existed for decades.

      If you zoom out a bit, your argument would be more-or-less the same when regular automobiles were replacing the functioning transit systems in the USA, specifically in LA.

      22 replies →

    • ghushn3  2 days ago

      Why? Why is not "everyone has access" and "wellbeing for everyone" the reward for inventing the future?

      Why is "that person gets to be extraordinarily wealthy" for inventing the future rather than "we all chipped in so we could all benefit" for inventing the future?

      If Waymos make the world better and safer and more convenient, why are they not simply something we figure out how to make a public good?

      In Star Trek you didn't have to pay to take the turbolift or transporter around large spaces, everyone got the benefits of the technology.

      4 replies →

  • kelnos  2 days ago

    Well it depends on their competition and what the market will bear. If they have competitors with a similar-quality product that is undercutting them on price, Waymo will have to lower prices to compete.

    And regardless, there's always a ceiling when it comes to what people will pay. In the case of a robotaxi there's of course significant marginal cost to expand the fleet of vehicles, but if they can make more money with more cars at a lower price point (than fewer cars at a higher price point), then they'll do so.

    • oblio  2 days ago

      > If they have competitors with a similar-quality product that is undercutting them on price, Waymo will have to lower prices to compete.

      Oligopoly, cartels, huge barriers to entry into the market.

      I appreciate your optimism in the free market for a domain where you have to spend tens of billions of dollars to even enter it

  • KPGv2  2 days ago

    In my experience, most price increases are in labor-intensive industries. Construction, etc.

    Compare with tech, which is what a Waymo is like: computers, TVs, etc are insanely cheap compared to their equivalents in the past.

    I had to point out to a Gen Zer complaining about how video game companies keep jacking up prices ("this game for the Switch is $80!") by pointing out that when you adjusted for inflation, a Super Nintendo game cost over $100 in today's money.

    • oblio  2 days ago

      What do you think is happening, now that the hyper scalers stopped growing by more than 20-30% per year? We're just entering the maturity stage of the tech world. 10-20 years from now all these subscriptions will reach and exceed cable levels.

  • elcritch  2 days ago

    Exactly, capitalism isn't about putting capital to work doing things. It's only concern is share holder profit!

dilyevsky  2 days ago

jags and ioniqs are a midway stop for sure. there's no need to have a seat you can't use with a steering wheel and windows that are not totally blacked out. the final product would probably resemble something closer to Cruise One concept.

asdfman123  2 days ago

What's expensive about operating a Waymo? Do the capital costs exceed that of the driver's salary?

barchar  2 days ago

I bet they will try and expand service area over expanding inventory. It's very expensive to keep cars in reserve for peak times, Uber gets around this by offloading the cost onto their drivers, but waymo will need to be able to pull cars from nearby areas.

autobodie  2 days ago

$23.66/hour in Savannah, GA in 2025 is a starvation wage. Savannah has a bad housing squeeze with very few apartments and they still cost nearly $2K/mo when you find them. God bless those poor souls.