Waymo Is Now Available Exclusively on Uber in Austin 🤠
Avride to launch ‘robotaxis’ in Dallas later this year, 6th generation Waymo spotted, and what leaving an SF event now looks like
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Top Stories of the Week
Waymo Is Now Available Exclusively on Uber in Austin (link). This was the big news of the week and with Austin’s annual South by Southwest (SXSW) festival kicking off Friday, Waymo’s launch is perfectly timed to show off its driverless tech to the massive crowd that floods Austin every year—about 300,000 people, according to the Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau.
There was a lot of buzz around Waymo and Uber’s announcement this week, but I couldn’t help thinking of Uber’s original launch in Austin back in 2014. According to Chris Nakutis Taylor, an early Uber Regional GM at the time, and co-founder of 8Fleet, a new startup building infrastructure for autonomous fleets, “SXSW was the UberX coming out party. The event was historically terrible to navigate for conference goers, but UberX went live that week and completed over 100,000 trips in 1 week, thereby cementing ridesharing as the new way to move around cities.”
Other longtime Uber employees took to Twitter to share their excitement with a neat war-room action shot. And while there was certainly a lot for Uber to celebrate, from what I heard and saw, their drivers were striking a different tone. The Austin launch this week seemed to hit home for a lot of human drivers that AVs are coming, and Uber doesn’t need or want you much longer. I don’t think that’s true just yet, but the sentiment with drivers is real.
Avride Partners with Hyundai to Launch Robotaxis on Uber in 2025 (link). I’m excited for more players to join the AV race but I’m guessing these vehicles will have a safety driver so they’re still a long way off from commercialization. Regular readers know that my ‘AV bar’ requires that there is no safety driver in the car and the vehicles must be operating on public roads. This type of tech was cool in 2022 when Motional was doing it but I’m not sure it’s exactly groundbreaking today. Add another notch in the belt for Uber’s AV partnerships team though - these guys are on a roll.
For more details on this partnership, check out this great post by Daniel Abreu Marques.
Waymo is Finally Testing Scheduled Rides in LA, SF and Phoenix! (link). In case you missed my analysis earlier in the week - early reviews are in and the product works great. I’d love to see Waymo iterate and add more features like this even faster though. I’ve always been amazed by the sheer quantity of engineers and product folks that Uber has working on their apps. It really is a ton of work to manage and improve these apps across different regulations, countries and languages.
Cool Rides
What Leaving an Event in SF Looks Like Now (link). I guess this has become a common occurrence in SF but it does highlight an issue that Waymo needs to figure out: how to pick-up a large number of people after big events. This is one of the trickiest problems in the rideshare industry, and frankly, Uber and Lyft still haven’t figured it out yet. You’re battling poor cell service, drunk riders, confined geography and regulatory constraints. The process today also relies on a lot of manual intervention from both drivers (i.e. calling passengers to find them) and riders (savvy ones know to walk a few blocks away from the event and then call for a ride). These aren’t intractable issues for Waymo but it will take a lot of resources to figure them out.
My wife and I had a healthy baby boy Friday, we actually took Waymo to the hospital (link). My wife yelled at me for driving too slow on the way to the hospital for our most recent child so not sure I’d advise taking a Waymo if you’re in a rush 😭
6th generation Waymo vehicle (link). First time I’ve seen the Zeekr in action without camouflage :) Looks neat, but I still don’t understand the use case.
AVs and Humans behaving badly
Man on top of a Waymo in DTLA (link).
Other Stuff
British self-driving startup Wayve enters Germany with new testing and development hub (link).
Waymo vs Uber/Lyft is a beautiful illustration of the money/time efficient frontier. Waymo has stable prices and therefore unpredictable wait times, Uber and Lyft have less predictable prices but consistently short wait times (link). Waymo does have variable pricing on demand but it’s not anywhere near as sensitive as Uber and Lyft’s since it can only affect one side of the marketplace (demand). If Waymo raises prices too high, that will curb demand but it’s not a great rider experience to pay a premium price when an UberX might be 2-3x cheaper. And of course, there’s the PR and brand image that could take a hit - ‘My Waymo charged me $300 to get home!’. Uber’s dynamic supply means that when prices surge, and rates go up, more drivers hit the road in order to balance supply and demand.
Sway Mobility & Mapless AI Launch Detroit’s First Teleoperated EV Carshare Pilot, Corktown Carshare (link, no paywall).
Waymo Needs Fewer Robotaxis Than You Think and Tesla's California Dreams (link).
Tesla has finally applied for a ride-hailing permit in California, something they’ve talked about doing for a while. The move could put it in direct competition with Uber, Lyft, and Waymo – but for now, all they’ve done is take the first regulatory step (link).
Waymo offering weekday discounts to testers in LA from 2 am to 2 pm (link). Might be a test to spur demand during late night hours but it is interesting to note that the poster complains about 20+ minute wait times, even late at night. This is the challenge with a large spread out region like Los Angeles.
TDD in the Media
We’re making waves! The Driverless Digest was recently featured in The Verge - A Waymo Loyalty Program Could be in the Works.
Got a hot tip for me (like a new Waymo loyalty program!?)? Just hit reply to this email—I’d love to hear from you. Thanks! 😊
Until next week.
-Harry
What role is reserved to Europe in the driverless car industry? As a strategic technology, could they compete in short or mid term with US or China?