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by SeanAnderson 841 days ago
It's cheaper than Uber if you're the type of person to tip your Uber driver 20%. Very infrequently it's cheaper without tip, but usually it's a bit more expensive.

Crucially, it doesn't care if you ask it to drive into heavy traffic. I'm so over Uber giving me an estimated time for pickup, having the driver get within range to learn additional details about the trip, then cancelling on me because it doesn't fit their desires. I was late to a reservation a couple of weeks ago because I wanted to go downtown during Superbowl Weekend and an estimated 3 minute pickup morphed into a ~20 minute delay as I waited for an Uber driver to commit to the drive.
3 comments
ryandrake 841 days ago
> I'm so over Uber giving me an estimated time for pickup, having the driver get within range to learn additional details about the trip, then cancelling on me because it doesn't fit their desires.

I remember waiting for a Lyft that was perpetually 8 minutes away, because driver after driver canceled the ride when they saw the destination and presumably didn't want to drive that far. After about 9 or so cancelations and about 45 minutes, I finally got a pickup. Not having to deal with that shit is worth a few extra bucks to me.

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JumpCrisscross 841 days ago
Post Prop 22 [1], ride shares in California have gotten expensive. I think that created the opening for Waymo.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_...

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raylad 841 days ago
I routinely see it priced at double Lyft or Uber in SF.
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SeanAnderson 841 days ago
It's certainly going up in price as people get off the waitlist and the number of vehicles allowed in service stays fixed. I'm optimistic, though. I would travel a lot more if the price was cheaper, I assume Waymo has enough data to realize that, and they will act in a way that creates a larger market, rather than squeezing the existing market, once they have the legal ability to do so.
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seanmcdirmid 841 days ago
They don't really need to decrease in price so much as not increase in price. Human labor keeps getting more expensive while the tech is probably getting cheaper, if they are just competing with Uber/Lyft, they can wait this out. On the other hand, they could definitely grow the market for taxi-like services like Uber did when it initially came out, but without unsustainable VC subsidies.
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