[dghlsakjg]

I've never even seen a Waymo and I haven't left North America for half a decade. Popular in SF does not mean inevitable everyhwere.

It remains to be seen whether robotaxis can 1. scale outside of certain cities 2. make a profit given the apparent teams of actual human remote drivers that robotaxi companies employ to get their robots out of trouble. I would love to see it, but the lack of speed and momentum points to it having some serious growing pains.

[seanmcdirmid]

I rode a few in SF and can’t wait for them to come to Seattle. They don’t use actual human remote drivers, and the support person I spoke to when I had an issue had a Filipino accent, so I’m not sure they were even in the usa (although that totally could have been California also). I don’t think they wound need that many people anyways to do live support. Waymo is definitely being cautious, but the cities they move into seem to all be success stories.

[dghlsakjg]

They say they don't have drivers, but they do admit to having actual people that solve live issues that the car cannot understand, which seems like a semantic difference to me. If its one support person per 1k cars, its probably a non issue, if its one per 5 cars then its a totally different problem.

In any case, the "can it make money" question is still unanswered (at least according to Waymo as of March). https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/20/waymo-ceo-tekedra-mawakana-1...

[seanmcdirmid]

If those faults are limited to 1 5 minute session every 20 or so rides, then it isn’t a big deal to cover them.