[kgwgk]

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/10/report-waymo-aiming-to-...

"Even if Waymo's schedule slips a few months and it introduces a self-driving car service in the middle of 2018 instead of late 2017, that will still give the company a multiple-year head start over most of its rivals. And it would confound skeptics who insist that full self-driving technology is still years away."

https://www.ft.com/content/3355f5b0-539d-11e8-b24e-cad6aa67e...

Waymo forecast to capture 60% of driverless market

Group’s dominance by 2030 will force carmakers to adopt its technology, says report

Investment bank UBS estimated global revenues from self-driving technology by 2030 will be up to $2.8tn, with Alphabet’s Waymo unit the global leader.

[mlyle]

Sure, everyone knows Waymo's schedule has slipped.

I read the comment as saying that Waymo's product itself is not living up to expectations.

It looks like it's slowly but steadily expanding, at least in sunnier climes, and offering a decent user experience.

[kgwgk]

Ok, maybe the as-of-2024 product is living up to the 2018-horizon expectations from 2017 (as long as your expectations were not at the high end of the range at the time).

[mlyle]

Yah, the question is whether we are getting there. No one in 2030 will care whether it was delivered in 2026 or 2020.

[kgwgk]

The people who didn't get a driving license in 2017 because what was the point if cars would drive themselves in a couple of years may care. Even more so if they finally have to wait to 2050.

Anyway, the question was about expectations - and those came with a timeline.

[mlyle]

> Anyway, the question was about expectations - and those came with a timeline.

The mention was of a "collapse" in the space, too-- which can't be true if we're still getting there.

I expect the timeframe of 2030 is when we get most of the way there. Even exponential growth takes time to reach a big world. Most of what Waymo has left to do is rollout.

[qznc]

Waymo does not sell cars. They are in a different business.

I don’t really know the numbers but Waymo adds something like 50k worth of hardware into the cars. That is not a viable approach for consumer cars (Mercedes, Tesla, etc).

[SoftTalker]

That hardware cost will drop eventually as it becomes commoditized and competing providers emerge. We're still pretty early in the game.

[mlyle]

Maybe. Not everything ever manages to make it to low cost, high volume- either because there is no reasonable path to making it that cheap, or because there are not sufficiently large markets in the in-between prices.

[prepend]

That article is from 7 years ago. It seems unwise to make a judgement for today based on it.