Comment by jimbo808
3 days ago
I'm implying that drivers are more efficient at cleaning and maintaining, refueling, storing, repairing, and replacing their cars they own than the complex systems of personnel maintaining a much more expensive fleet of cars they don't own or give a shit about.
Are you also implying that people who maintain vehicles for a living do a worse job at it than the owners doing it themselves? I would say the opposite is true.
Plenty of companies around the world have well-maintained fleets of vehicles. Trucking businesses, bus companies, train companies, even some taxi companies with salaried drivers, ...
No, I'm implying that people who maintain their own cars do it more efficiently. The simple stuff like cleaning has to be done by someone. It's not about doing a "worse job," it's about doing a more expensive job.
Waymo is replacing human drivers with a capital-intensive fleet business, a substantially more expensive vehicle, and still a large number of remote assistance staff, fleet operators, safety engineers, incident response, operations staff, etc.
But I'm not saying they can't beat a human driver, I'm just saying it hasn't been proven that they will. It may only be that the highest demand markets will provide a sufficient enough utilization to make it economically viable.