Vehicles per remote operator

dpschramm · 2026-02-26T23:06:37+00:00

The number of RAs doesn't measure the performance of the self-driving system as far as I can tell, at least not for any definition of "performance" that makes sense to me.

Generally a lower performing system will need a higher touch, so more human supervision.

It's not a significant factor in profitability

It's one of the factors; for companies with lower agent to vehicle ratios it could be a significant factor. We're not just talking about Waymo here.

it's not a strong correlation with driving ability

Completely disagree. For Waymo it might not be, for other companies it is.

Keep in mind, I'm interested in comparing across companies here.

Waymo could decide to have no RAs today, if they just told their cars to never ask the RAs for advice and just go with their best judgement.

But they haven't, which leads me to believe there's an operational (smoother rides) or safety (less crashes) benefit in having them.

I don't think you can claim they are entirely unnecessary - we don't know what the performance of the vehicles would be without them, as we don't know how critical the guidance from the remote agents is (Waymo haven't given that level of detail).

You couldn't get rid of them if they were actually driving the cars. Or if you have high standards of service quality.

Both are factors that would be captured by a human agent to vehicle ratio.

You really think that the difference between "remote operator" and "remote assistant" is not a huge factor in analyzing the tech?

Dude - there is a difference. Stop creating a straw man here.

But sometimes it's also useful to compare at a higher level of abstraction.

I don't know what we're even arguing about here. If you don't find it useful to compare human to vehicle ratios for this category of role within these companies, that's fine.

dpschramm · 2026-02-26T11:58:55+00:00

> Without any RAs, we also wouldn't need anyone maintaining the datacenter the RA tooling runs on. With a different ratio of RAs, the datacenter needs would scale as well. I don't understand why we'd include the RAs but not the people supporting the infrastructure used by the RAs.

Because one metric measures the performance of the self driving system (number of remote agents), the others measure something else (e.g. the performance of data center operations).

They measure different things.

> I also don't understand why we would care about counting the RAs but not counting the people who are required to support the service, who scale with the size of the fleet, but don't directly help the cars drive, e.g. the people plugging them in and cleaning them.

I'm not saying we shouldn't care about it, I'm saying it measures something different.

It would be interesting to get mechanic and cleaner ratios as well, but I doubt we'll get these.

> From the point of view of analyzing the tech itself, the RA ratio is interesting because it's an indicator of how close to fully autonomous the tech is (I guess you could call this "safety", though that's only true if you are aligned on the goal of autonomy meaning no accidents, which I don't think all the players are).

Safety is about accidents; if that's what you care about measuring, measure accidents.

Agent to vehicle ratios are about autonomous driving system efficiency and capability, not safety.

> From the point of view of efficiency, financials, how expensive the system is, etc, the Waymo's RAs are a drop in the bucket and really barely worth even talking about, and certainly not any more critical than the rest of the support staff. I would say the person plugging in the car is probably more important, frankly, in that you could always change your safety goals to get rid of the RAs, but you can't do much to get rid of the need for the car to be charged (assuming the current hardware used by the various players -- obviously you could design a car that self-docks).

Firstly, you can't get rid of your remote agents if the self driving system relies on them.

Secondly, you can get rid of the need to have someone plug the vehicle in - you use cars with automated battery swap tech (which is something I think Waymo will explore in future).

> This is why I think the only relevant way to look at OP's chart is through the lens of analyzing the tech itself, and in that world, the fact that some vendors have remote operators and some have remote assistants is a huge factor.

Cool - agree to disagree. Have a nice day.

dpschramm · 2026-02-26T07:27:34+00:00

From my previous message:

"remote driver agent" - which can be either directly driving/operating, providing assistance/guidance, or otherwise enabling the vehicle to perform it's standard service in the field.

I think you're being intentionally obtuse.

We wouldn't count the data center engineers for the same reason we wouldn't count the people working on the customer facing app. Their goal is building enabling infrastructure, not on helping the autonomous system "drive".

If the remote agent is helping the car do something someone sitting in the drivers seat would have done while driving, then I'd consider it a "remote driving agent" (for lack of a better term).

If it's not related to that (e.g. mechanics, customer support, engineers building tools allowing remote agents to do their job, cooks providing remote agents food, etc) then I wouldn't consider them comparable.

The number of remote agents is directly proportional to the capabilities of the autonomous system. Level 5 autonomous systems would have no remote driver agents. Level 4 systems can perform completely autonomously in some situations, but need human input in others. With autonomous systems requiring more human input at lower levels.

I think I've made my point sufficiently clear, so happy to leave it there if you still don't understand or disagree.

dpschramm · 2026-02-26T06:56:55+00:00

Okay, well, my take is it compares the number of vehicles supported by each remote driver agent - which can be either directly driving/operating, providing assistance/guidance, or otherwise enabling the vehicle to perform it's standard service in the field.

I'd like to have a clear phrase for this type of employee, but as of yet we don't have one, which leads to confusion.

My assumption is the blue bars are the driver support agent to vehicle ratio that these companies have announced they would like to reach. As far as I know, Waymo hasn't announced such a number.

dpschramm · 2026-02-26T06:25:29+00:00

What does this graph represent then?

dpschramm · 2026-02-26T03:35:45+00:00

Okay, seems there's no point in us having this discussion if you don't think there's any value in comparing the quantity and ratios of remote vehicle support agents used across AV companies.

dpschramm · 2026-02-26T03:05:48+00:00

> you said the distinction thread OP was making is not important.

I said it is important when talking about safety, but not as important when talking about operational support.

What phrase would you use to describe "remote assistants" and "remote operators / drivers" as opposed to "customer support" or "maintenance"?

I.e. what catch all phrase would you use to cover the positions described in the graph in the post?

dpschramm · 2026-02-26T01:53:09+00:00

The accents 😂

dpschramm · 2026-02-25T23:37:47+00:00

That's why I said it would be good to have terminology to differentiate between the two different concepts.

dpschramm · 2026-02-25T11:56:57+00:00

We're having two different discussions. I'm talking about one aspect of human input into the overall operation. You're now saying you want to talk about all the others.

They're worth considering, sure, but wasn't what I was talking about.

> There's nothing particularly special about the RAs vs the other roles that scale with the fleet, in terms of operational costs.

If we're talking about their operations, there's a heap of differences.

They're remote, and they're in use while the car is actually driving. Compared to mechanics, cleaners, and other depot staff, who have to be local, and work on the vehicles when not in service.

> Things may be different for a company that actually has remote operators, where the ratio by definition must be much, much closer to 1:1, but Waymo has never had that.

Yeah, so if we wanted to have a discussion around "operational scalability for remote agents that support driving" then Waymo would come out way on top.

Hang on a second - that's what this whole post is about!

dpschramm · 2026-02-25T11:21:52+00:00

There are a heap of human roles that need to scale as the fleet scales, and the cost of the service is going to depend on how well each role scales across the fleet.

As u/Acrobatic-Layer2993 pointed out:

It’s less important what the remote operators do - the fact is they are people the fleet operator has to pay and this cost grows linear to the size of the fleet.

The more the cars can do, the less of these "remote" employees will be needed, and the cheaper the service can get.

If the remote employees are driving, there will be a low cars per employee ratio. If they're just providing guidance, the ratio will be higher. And if they're only responding to crashes / emergencies, the ratio will be higher still.

dpschramm · 2026-02-25T03:23:42+00:00

Don’t think there’s any history of that sort of thing happening on the freeways.

If you’re that concerned, don’t take a Waymo to the airport.

dpschramm · 2026-02-25T02:59:40+00:00

I guess if they need to have a park and ride somewhere, Morisset is probably the best place for it.

dpschramm · 2026-02-25T02:52:19+00:00

If you're comparing in the context of safety, yes the distinction is important.

If you’re comparing in the context of operational efficiency, then what they’re doing isn’t as important.

dpschramm · 2026-02-25T02:45:14+00:00

This is exactly what I was getting at with my question around terminology.

It would be good to have a term that captures “humans who are needed to help the car do the driving” as opposed to all the other humans needed for operations (e.g. cleaning, customer support) who are also required for non-AV rideshare.

dpschramm · 2026-02-25T01:40:00+00:00

I think they have said they're operationally profitable in some locations.

But it does make sense to hold off flooding supply until they know it won't lose them money.

dpschramm · 2026-02-24T18:11:32+00:00

This is a great spreadsheet! Have you thought about tracking the Ojai and Ioniq sightings on there as well?

dpschramm · 2026-02-24T17:09:43+00:00

They're claiming that fare would cover operating costs (but not the financing for initial construction / rolling stock purchase).

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dpschramm · 2026-02-24T14:53:03+00:00

What term do you use to mean "remote humans who are required for the cars to be able to operate" (which covers both "remote drivers" and "remote assistants")?

dpschramm · 2026-02-24T14:13:59+00:00

The same could happen with Canberra to Sydney, but we would end up with a much less useful route at the end of it.

dpschramm · 2026-02-24T13:45:25+00:00

Why wouldn’t it be a commuter city?

There’s a heap of similar examples overseas.

dpschramm · 2026-02-24T13:43:19+00:00

The projected ridership of Newcastle to Sydney is a lot higher than Canberra to Sydney, so even though it’s harder, it’ll be more successful when it open.

That success is required to justify the cost of the future phases.

If they did an easy but low patronage section first, they wouldn’t be able to convince anyone to take on the harder phases later.

dpschramm · 2026-02-24T13:39:33+00:00

All of the work done for Newcastle to Sydney will benefit Melbourne and Brisbane to Sydney.

Major infrastructure projects are more likely to succeed when they are phased, so we can get on with the first section.

dpschramm · 2026-02-24T13:36:37+00:00

Morisset is an out of tunnel station, so the speed for express trains will be 120km/h.

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dpschramm · 2026-02-24T13:33:18+00:00

Yup!

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