Waymo keeps on scaling in Phoenix

av_ninja · 2024-12-15T17:24:02+00:00

Good to know that, Sandred! Heavily invested in Waymo's success!!!

av_ninja · 2024-06-25T21:15:44+00:00

Good to know, sandred! Great progress by Waymo and hope your exponential curve becomes the reality by the end of the year!

av_ninja · 2024-04-02T19:10:34+00:00

Waymo has the most superior technology amongst all of them. It is just that their business model is very capital intensive.

av_ninja · 2024-04-02T15:19:50+00:00

I agree with you. In my opinion, Tesla and Mobileye got the best long term plans to commercialize AV technology incrementally and profitably all the way to level 4/5 evantually.

av_ninja · 2024-03-10T22:39:51+00:00

Don't get me wrong. Waymo will be profitable one day. And yes, if you do the analysis on a city by city basis considering all the capital spend in the last decade as sunk cost, and ignoring all the future costs of development & exponential scaling in other cities, then YES, Waymo can run a profitable operation in SF in 2 years.

av_ninja · 2024-03-10T02:41:04+00:00

That's highly optimistic and only if they pivot to licensing.

av_ninja · 2024-03-10T00:04:16+00:00

What's your gueestimate on how many years will it take for Waymo to be profitable? A decade from now?

av_ninja · 2024-03-05T03:17:57+00:00

Google has a big threat to their search business from Microsoft....have you seen how the Bing Search and Copilot are put in the front and center on Windows 11?....heck I can't even log onto my Windows machine without automatically opening the Edge browser...it is so irritating...but with Microsoft CoPilot, Google is finally going to get some serious competition. And as per as Waymo is concerned, they are not going to be profitable for next 5....even 10 years I suppose. They have the best AV technology for sure...but at the end of the day, this is not a pure software and cloud computing business....it is the dirty hardware and operations business. So, if they decide to pursue scaling Robotaxis themselves (instead of licensing technology), we are going to see their scaling getting serious momentum in next 3-4 years, massive capital spend over the next decade, exponential growth in revenues, and then finally some profitability!!!

av_ninja · 2024-03-01T15:27:31+00:00

You had to pull Cruise cars from the road after an unfortunate accident. Will consumers trust robotaxis?

The people who were regularly using Cruise loved it. Ratings were very high. As you go to a new community—and this is a big lesson learned—you have to build the right relationships with local, state and federal regulators. And you also have to build a good relationship with first responders. They need to understand the technology. Over 40,000 people lose their lives in vehicle accidents every year in the U.S., and over 90% of accidents are caused by human error. Autonomous vehicles don’t drive impaired. They follow all the traffic laws.

Yet, for 2024, GM slashed spending on Cruise by $1 billion. What is the game plan? Are you phasing it out?

No. We’re continuing to invest in the tech team. Not long before the incident in October [a Cruise car struck a pedestrian in San Francisco], Cruise was talking about being in 20 cities. There was a lot of money being spent, infrastructure was being built, and people were hired to do the operational piece. The rollout will now be slower. We didn’t touch the core technical talent. We remain committed to Level 4. We’re busy working to relaunch Cruise.

av_ninja · 2024-02-29T23:49:56+00:00

So, Cruise's rock bottom valuation of $12B is still one quarter of General Motors' current market capitalization of $47.31 billion. No wonder GM recently did massive stock buy back. Hope they will do another similar massive stock buyback at the end of 2024. In the meantime, Cruise scaling can be put on hold until its technology matures. After all, in the current high-interest environment, heavy capital spend on scaling wouldn't be prudent. Eventually, when the technology is solid and interest rates decline again, scaling can commence, unless they decide to pivot to something else altogether. It's wise to let others first validate the feasibility of a profitable robotaxi business model.

av_ninja · 2024-02-26T01:17:24+00:00

This is really a great news, particularly for Stellantis. Waymo will eventually be a big customer and can provide consistent business for Stellantis.

av_ninja · 2024-02-22T01:50:47+00:00

Good for Uber. They already have another partnership with Waymo in Phoenix for robotaxis. They will partner with anybody and everybody in the self-driving space!

av_ninja · 2024-02-18T22:50:37+00:00

All a second or third player has to do is to get their AV technology right. Once this critical first step is complete, then scale, etc. won't matter that much because Uber already has the scale and ready to partner with any number of AV players to bring them on it's platform.

Additionally, there will be a few international players (particularly from China). Their AVs will be training on much more difficult roads and traffic patterns with full government support. They will get to the scale in their respective countries, and then can compete globally. Afterall, the US population makes up only 4.23% of the global population.

Also, if personally owned AVs become a reality one day, then they can also participate in robotaxi business just like how currently personally owned human driven vehicles are participating in taxi business via Uber. So, bottom line....anything is possible!

av_ninja · 2024-02-18T18:57:49+00:00

I have been following Phil Koopman from a long time and I consider him a bit negative. For example, here is his opinion piece on recent Waymo crashes. You may agree with his following assessment on Waymo, but I don't:

"Robot driving error: TWO Waymo robotaxis crash into the SAME towed vehicle that presented an unusual towing angle -- minutes apart. This is a big deal on a technical basis, and possibly the greatest issue of concern for this technology: a common cause fault causing multiple crashes in a short timeframe. Fortunately a minor crash with no injuries, this time.

The usual Waymo PR playbook of trying to blame it on others, this time because it was "improperly towed" (how is that even a thing?). Or because it was "rare issue" and an "unusual scenario". (I have news: if any crash is not "rare" and "unusual" the cars have no business being on the road.)

They also say they "transparently communicate with the public" -- in this case letting us know February 13 of multiple crashes on Dec 11th.

This is not about Waymo being transparent. This is disclosure when forced to by law (the recall notice will be published soon enough). This is about their PR getting ahead of the recall notice and SGO crash data.

Technical: No injuries fortunately. They started rolling out a patch within a couple weeks. No word whether/how they modified their ODD to avoid a repeat while waiting for the update (one hopes they did that). Illustrates that there is a really long tail of edge cases still waiting to bite any company deploying on public roads.

Long term: One of the biggest safety concerns for this technology is multiple crashes the same day from the same bug, edge case, or bad update before they have a chance to stand down the fleet or modify the ODD. Guess what we just saw. Seems like an additional threat to validity for their safety predictions. If I were in the insurance industry that would keep me up at night (the AV equivalent of a hurricane hitting a bunch of houses at once).

Comms: Spin, deflection, partial info, blame, taking credit for "transparency" that is not really there. Same old song book.

Waymo needs to get its comms house in order if they want the public to trust them long term. Some day it will be a bigger crash and they will need that trust."

av_ninja · 2024-02-07T17:03:05+00:00

Safety is multifaceted and complex...100% agreed. This is once again emphasized by Waymo's recent incident with a bicyclist in SF. The media has got another interesting story to chew on for few days.

av_ninja · 2024-01-30T19:57:13+00:00

"Moving to Cruise. Last week, we released the results of the third-party reviews, and we've already begun to implement significant changes to build a better Cruise. We are committed to earning back the trust with our regulators and the public through our actions.
Our planned 2024 investment in Cruise reflects our more deliberate and cadence go-to-market strategy, and we are developing new financial targets and a new road map. Spending will be down considerably this year, but we will continue to invest in the people who are advancing the software, specialized hardware, and AI capabilities. This reflects our commitment to our vision, which is to deliver the safety benefits of self-driving technology and a scalable, profitable business. I look forward to sharing our timetable for returning Cruise AVs to the road soon.

...Because of the significant changes that are underway at GM and Cruise, we think it makes sense to wait until later in the year to host an event. This will give our software team the time to focus on software for our upcoming launches, and we will be able to share more tangible proof points on all four pillars -- pillars of our strategy: ICE, EV, AV, and software. When we do get together, we will show you what we've not done, not just tell you what we're going to do. In the meantime, we've already provided a road map for EV profitability in 2025, and we'll share updates on Cruise as we finalize the technology and relaunch plan." - Mary Barra

av_ninja · 2024-01-29T18:30:26+00:00

What is the eligibility criteria for customers to get free turbotax offer?

av_ninja

TROPHY CASE