<story><title>How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business</title><url>https://fortune.com/2024/05/29/waymo-self-driving-robo-taxi-uber-tesla-alphabet/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>spiderice</author><text>I have kids and don&amp;#x27;t like Taxis, but I&amp;#x27;m not sure I entirely agree with your take.  The idea of a humanless Taxi showing up to my house sounds way more appealing to me.&lt;p&gt;I can take my time to get car seats in and kids buckled, without feeling the pressure to hurry from the human driver.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t have to feel like my kids misbehaving are going to annoy a human driver, or get me a bad review in Uber&amp;#x2F;Lyft.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t have to worry about tipping, or the driver taking a longer route to charge me more.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t have to worry about small-talk, or awkwardly sitting in silence when I normally would be talking with those I&amp;#x27;m driving with.&lt;p&gt;Obviously this doesn&amp;#x27;t cover all use cases for a car (pretty sure you can&amp;#x27;t load a kayak onto a Waymo because you&amp;#x27;d block sensors), but it seems WAY better to me as someone who doesn&amp;#x27;t like to deal with the people aspect of Taxis.</text></item><item><author>codexb</author><text>Maybe if you&amp;#x27;re under 25 and have always lived in a dense city this seems like a valid take. Taxis aren&amp;#x27;t new, they have always existed. Just because they&amp;#x27;re driven by computers now isn&amp;#x27;t going to magically change all the reasons that people didn&amp;#x27;t use them before (hint: it wasn&amp;#x27;t because they were driven by humans).&lt;p&gt;No one with kids &lt;i&gt;wants&lt;/i&gt; to ride in taxis with kids all the time. Ditto for anyone with hobbies that require transporting large things, like kayaks, bikes, etc. Or people with large pets. Or grocery shopping for more than 1-2 people. Or any of the dozens of other conveniences that Americans have come to expect from owning a car over the past century.</text></item><item><author>jseliger</author><text>I just left a version of this in another thread—I live in Phoenix and now take Waymo regularly, and it seems like we&amp;#x27;re close to a world in which most people take self-driving cars most of the time, crash rates plummet, and these kinds of articles come to resemble articles from 1910 about horse-related problems.&lt;p&gt;Humans suck at driving: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;jakeseliger.com&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;16&amp;#x2F;maybe-cars-are-just-really-bad-but-theyre-normal-so-we-dont-pay-attention-to-how-bad&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;jakeseliger.com&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;16&amp;#x2F;maybe-cars-are-just-reall...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Waymos avoid many of the Uber challenges: foul-smelling &amp;quot;air fresheners,&amp;quot; dubious music &amp;#x2F; talk radio choices, etc.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JeremyNT</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Obviously this doesn&amp;#x27;t cover all use cases for a car (pretty sure you can&amp;#x27;t load a kayak onto a Waymo because you&amp;#x27;d block sensors), but it seems WAY better to me as someone who doesn&amp;#x27;t like to deal with the people aspect of Taxis.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;In a world where waymo works as a taxi, it also works to deliver a human-drivable rental car right to your door (and send it on to the next customer when you&amp;#x27;re done with it).&lt;p&gt;So now the short term car rental user experience should be dramatically better, even if the robotaxi isn&amp;#x27;t appropriate for all the tasks.</text></comment>
<story><title>How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business</title><url>https://fortune.com/2024/05/29/waymo-self-driving-robo-taxi-uber-tesla-alphabet/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>spiderice</author><text>I have kids and don&amp;#x27;t like Taxis, but I&amp;#x27;m not sure I entirely agree with your take.  The idea of a humanless Taxi showing up to my house sounds way more appealing to me.&lt;p&gt;I can take my time to get car seats in and kids buckled, without feeling the pressure to hurry from the human driver.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t have to feel like my kids misbehaving are going to annoy a human driver, or get me a bad review in Uber&amp;#x2F;Lyft.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t have to worry about tipping, or the driver taking a longer route to charge me more.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t have to worry about small-talk, or awkwardly sitting in silence when I normally would be talking with those I&amp;#x27;m driving with.&lt;p&gt;Obviously this doesn&amp;#x27;t cover all use cases for a car (pretty sure you can&amp;#x27;t load a kayak onto a Waymo because you&amp;#x27;d block sensors), but it seems WAY better to me as someone who doesn&amp;#x27;t like to deal with the people aspect of Taxis.</text></item><item><author>codexb</author><text>Maybe if you&amp;#x27;re under 25 and have always lived in a dense city this seems like a valid take. Taxis aren&amp;#x27;t new, they have always existed. Just because they&amp;#x27;re driven by computers now isn&amp;#x27;t going to magically change all the reasons that people didn&amp;#x27;t use them before (hint: it wasn&amp;#x27;t because they were driven by humans).&lt;p&gt;No one with kids &lt;i&gt;wants&lt;/i&gt; to ride in taxis with kids all the time. Ditto for anyone with hobbies that require transporting large things, like kayaks, bikes, etc. Or people with large pets. Or grocery shopping for more than 1-2 people. Or any of the dozens of other conveniences that Americans have come to expect from owning a car over the past century.</text></item><item><author>jseliger</author><text>I just left a version of this in another thread—I live in Phoenix and now take Waymo regularly, and it seems like we&amp;#x27;re close to a world in which most people take self-driving cars most of the time, crash rates plummet, and these kinds of articles come to resemble articles from 1910 about horse-related problems.&lt;p&gt;Humans suck at driving: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;jakeseliger.com&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;16&amp;#x2F;maybe-cars-are-just-really-bad-but-theyre-normal-so-we-dont-pay-attention-to-how-bad&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;jakeseliger.com&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;16&amp;#x2F;maybe-cars-are-just-reall...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Waymos avoid many of the Uber challenges: foul-smelling &amp;quot;air fresheners,&amp;quot; dubious music &amp;#x2F; talk radio choices, etc.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>paganel</author><text>How do you make sure there isn’t human semen or worse on the seats on which you and your children will sit? At least with taxis driven by humans you knew that there was someone making sure that won’t happen that often, but with driverless taxis all bets are off.</text></comment>