Lyft CEO Says Waymo Isn’t Taking Market Share 🤷
A Tesla Cybertruck reportedly crashes on FSD v13, Waymo expands LA service area, and Uber CEO’s interview on aggregation and autonomy
Top Stories of the Week
Lyft’s CEO says Waymo isn’t taking their market share in SF (link). In their Q4 2024 earnings call, David Risher mentioned that despite Waymo’s growth, Lyft's share in SF remains flat. He believes Waymo is either expanding the market or taking share from someone else (wonder who that could be..), but not Lyft. He also pointed out that Lyft's growth is faster in Phoenix, a market with notable Waymo presence, than in the rest of the country.
A lot of conflicting statements and data around Waymo’s market share in SF but I’m not sure I buy this explanation. It’s impossible to know for sure without the actual trip data from both companies (never going to get that) but here’s what I think is happening: Waymo has hundreds of cars in SF, people love the product and Waymo is likely increasing the overall pie while also pulling some riders from both Uber and Lyft. Uber has more market share so it makes sense that dual app-ers would now default to Uber and Waymo, instead of Uber and Lyft, like they did in the past. So my guess is that Lyft is losing some market share before Uber, which is why it’s so important for Lyft to get their own AV partnerships up and running asap.
An Interview with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi About Aggregation and Autonomy (link). Dara is open arms to Tesla in this interview and I don’t blame him. Tesla is the big question mark in autonomy because if/when they get FSD working, they already have millions of vehicles on the road owned by individuals and fleets. So they benefit from the same laws of ‘variable supply’ that Uber does and can fulfill peak demand without having to worry about low demand times and utilization. Whenever it’s not busy, the Teslas go offline and back to their owners. Here’s the quote that stood out to me:
Yeah listen, no one wants to compete against Tesla or Elon, if you can help it. Their capabilities are pretty extraordinary, but I think the same economic laws apply to them. Ultimately, if Tesla puts their cars on our network, we already have 150,000 drivers who are driving Teslas, and if they get FSD, they’d love to plug it into Uber as well. Then, that Tesla that is both on Uber, and by the way, they could be both on Uber and the network, that is going to create much, much more revenue. Ultimately, that’ll increase the value of the Tesla so that the residual value of that car improves, and if they don’t do that, there’ll be some other OEM that does it.
Waymo expands their LA service area, now including parts of Westchester and Inglewood (link). Still no LAX, but you can go to Sofi stadium now which is cool.
Cool Rides
Waymo makes an unprotected left turn flawlessly with traffic coming from both ways - Austin TX (link).
Oh Waymo, I’m in love! The future is here, I’ve met George Jetson 🤖 (link).
AVs and Humans behaving badly
After 50 Rides, I Finally Got Kicked (link). Ironic, given that Waymo makes cycling a lot safer.
A reported Tesla Cybertruck crash on Full Self-Driving v13 goes viral (link). I didn’t see clear evidence that FSD was engaged before/during the accident, but figured it was only fair to include this story after sharing Tesla’s data last week, which I thought was missing some key context.
Driverless taxi filled with passengers rear-ended by hit-and-run driver in downtown L.A. (link).
Waymo vs Steam (link). Steam takes the W here.
Other Stuff
Former Tesla leader here. These are my thoughts on the Tesla vs UBER debate on Autonomous Vehicles 🧵(link). It’s tough to get current Tesla employees on record (other than Elon lol) so this is the next best thing. Uber has the largest network of drivers and best network effects, so drivers earn the most and passengers get the cheapest and most reliable rides. But since Uber relies on independent contractors, they don’t have to pay for any vehicles, vehicle expenses OR downtime. If it’s slow, drivers log off and go home. If it’s busy, Uber uses bonuses and surge pricing to entice more drivers on the road to meet demand.
Waymo won’t be able to compete on that dimension but Tesla can since they already have millions of vehicles on the road as I mentioned earlier. Jorge brings up some good points around Tesla’s expertise in physical operations but I’m not sure that would matter much since the company can offload the capex, opex and risk to individual owners and fleet owners. And let’s not forget that Uber is already offering Waymo rides on the app, and seems to me that you could plug Tesla FSD vehicles into the Uber network too.
Lyft to roll out Mobileye powered-robotaxis ‘as soon as 2026' (link). They plan to launch a fully autonomous robotaxi service in Dallas as early as 2026, utilizing Mobileye technology. Better late than never.
Zoox robotaxi hands-on: safe but lagging (link).
Tesla's robotaxi strategy looks a lot like Waymo's (link).
The Waymo Way: Making Autonomous Driving a Reality | Dmitri Dolgov (link).
I think Ackman is wrong here on $UBER: if Google chooses to do so, it could put Waymo inside Google Maps (1 billion MAUs) and match riders to vehicles. Tesla is another threat. Either would obviate the need for Uber. All likely to happen a lot sooner than "many years" (link). There’s a lot more than putting a button on Google Maps and if Waymo cares about maximizing the utilization of their vehicles, they need Uber or Lyft.
Cathie Wood, in an attempt to illustrate how Tesla will scale better than Waymo, displayed how dramatically the cost of operating Waymo's are going down with each new generation (link). Waymo’s costs are coming down but I don't think that's where Tesla can potentially beat Waymo. It's with variable supply since Waymo won’t ever be able to do that.
In Uber’s earnings slides and prepared remarks this quarter we went deeper on our AV strategy. We believe AV can open up a $1T+ TAM for Uber in the US alone -- but while AV tech is advancing, commercialization will happen much more slowly (link). Great thread and report by Balaji here. This chart and quote stood out to me, “A fixed-supply network that can handle weekly peak demands would not need as much as 95% of the supply during multiple weekly demand troughs.”. This is the bear case against Waymo in a nutshell.
I’m also not convinced that Waymo will be able to get widespread customer adoption on their own. Regular people have a lot of apprehension around AVs and their potential negative labor implications. So it’s going to be tough to get folks to take their first AV ride and when you combine that with Waymo’s limited domain of operation, and shortcomings (like how slow they are compared to an Uber driver), I think it’s going to be an uphill battle. A partnership with Uber solves a lot of these challenges though which is why I’m confident the two companies are going to be linked at the hip for some time to come.
Waymo to Launch New "Tour Mode” (link). Not sure if they listened to someone who recently suggested the feature but I like it!
Tesla now provides a discount of up to 10% on Tesla Insurance for customers who frequently use Supervised FSD (link).
Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick on the Future of Self Driving: Uber, Waymo, Tesla (link). In this episode of The All-In podcast, he talks about Waymo’s progress, the limitations to the mass adoption of AVs, and Uber’s strategy among other things. TK doesn’t do a lot of press these days but this was an interesting interview.
My recent article on Waymo vs Uber made it to Reddit and sparked some great discussions there.
Until next week.
-Harry