Comment by mbesto
2 days ago
> Why is anyone surprised that a smaller segment of the market will pay more for a safer ride in a luxury vehicle compared to a base model Lyft
It's a criticism, because this same segment also realizes that a Waymo ride is WAY cheaper to operate than a human driven one.
Is it? It might be some day but they certainly have to factor in all the R&D they're spending.
> Is it?
Ummm then why on earth would they spend the money to build them if it wasn't?!
> but they certainly have to factor in all the R&D they're spending.
Those are capital expenses.
It’s not, or at least it definitely wasn’t a year ago. Those cars were something like $700k each and then there is a lot of software dev and AI infra to pay for. They were charging more than Lyft and were still losing money per ride.
> Those cars were something like $700k each
Source? Also, those numbers are quoted with including capital expenditures, which will get depreciated over years. Also, to do a like for like comparison you have to include all of the people, processes, and systems in place that support drivers. That cost center at Uber has to be in the millions globally for Uber (and hard to calculate on a per driver basis, but possible if we had internal numbers).
No public source, just talking to old coworkers at Google asking why the rollout was so incredibly slow in the Phoenix location. It’s almost all one big county and the driving conditions are the same across that whole valley.
So why not open up the entire service area? The answer was cost. At the time they were still losing money per ride to help get ML training feedback.
> It's a criticism, because this same segment also realizes that a Waymo ride is WAY cheaper to operate than a human driven one.
If this were broadly true, Waymo would be everywhere. If it is true, and that’s a big if that it isn’t being subsidized by the rest of Alphabet, it is only true in a very, very, tiny area of the Earth.
On the other hand, Uber is a publicly listed company with public financials already operating globally with profits.
This is true for mature markets but a new technology that a horde of lawyers are salivating over a chance to sue has a significant asymptomatic risk. One accident and the whole business is illegalized.
> If this were broadly true, Waymo would be everywhere.
It's not everywhere because of regulation and Waymo wanting to strategically roll it out carefully to markets. Remember, this is Waymo's first market to offer Waymo through the Uber app. There's a reason Waymo hasn't tested non-human driving in Chicago but it has in Phoenix, SF and Austin (I could give you a hint as to why but I'm sure its obvious).
> Uber is a publicly listed company with public financials already operating globally with profits.
And wants to create even more profit...what's your point? Also it's operating income is a paltry $2B for a company with $41B in revenue. Most of its current net income is from investing activities.