Waymo's market share is now equal to Lyft in San Francisco
GM pulls the plug on Cruise, Avride delivery robots now available in Dallas, and why Waymo’s economics may not be much better than Cruise’s.
Top Stories of the Week
GM scraps loss-making Cruise robotaxi business, leaving Tesla as the only U.S. automaker in the robotaxi space (link, no paywall). GM is ditching its Cruise robotaxi business after burning through $10B since 2016. They’re saying goodbye to robotaxis to focus on stuff that actually makes them money—like gas-powered trucks. Guess the robotaxi race just got a little less crowded!
A lot of hot takes this week on the Cruise news, but to me, the real downfall of the company started with the ‘dragging incident’. Not sure how that was GM’s fault. Either way, it solidifies Waymo’s position as the leader in the space and no one else is even close.
Speaking of Waymo’s dominance..
Waymo's market share is now equal to Lyft within San Francisco (SF), sort of.. (link). According to Yipit data, when Waymo launched in August 2023, Uber and Lyft were at 66% and 34% market share in SF.
15 months later in November 2024, Waymo was at 22%, the same as Lyft, with Uber at 55%.
Both Uber and Lyft lost low double digit percentage points of market share, but it's more painful for Lyft. Lyft gave up ~1/3 of their share. Uber lost ~1/6.
I’ve heard mixed reviews about Yipit data but the BIG caveat here is that this data comes from all rides with pickups and dropoffs inside Waymo’s SF operating boundary. So it excludes any ride to / from the airport, destinations outside the service area and likely a lot of destinations that are faster by freeway. That’s a lot of rides and revenue (airport rides are often 2-3x regular rides).
Last week, I estimated that Waymo was doing around 10,000 trips per day in SF, and I stand by that number. So that would imply that there are 50,000 total trips per day in SF in the ‘Waymo zone’. Seems plausible but I’m not sure why Lyft would lose so much more market share than Uber.
And I still don’t believe adding more Waymo cars onto the road will improve wait times. More Waymos will drive more demand, and thus maintain the high wait times, since demand > supply. As Bill Gurley asked, do you build to peak or average? If you build to peak, you have way too many Waymo cars for Tuesday afternoon. Uber solves this by having variable supply - they don't have to pay for drivers' downtime or when they go offline. Additionally, their surge pricing curbs demand in real time, and inspires drivers like me to drive during peak hours, since there’s higher earnings potential.
Cool Rides
Waymo all the way (link).
AVs behaving badly
Sorry I’m late, my WAYMO did 37 laps in the roundabout 💁🏻♂️ (link). Have no idea what happened here but it is funny..
Had my first unsuccessful trip with Waymo. Got stuck on the right lane of 3rd and King (link).
Waymo, oh no, this is not my destination (link).
Other Stuff
I think they’re probably worse since they have a lot more money to burn :-)
Avride Self-driving robots hitting Downtown Dallas streets for Uber Eats deliveries (link).
Why do we treat self-driving cars as things that can make zero mistakes whereas we give a lot of leniency to the average human driver? (link).
Until next week.
-Harry