This makes a lot of sense to me. When you ride in an Uber or a taxi, you're a guest in the driver's space. In a Waymo, it's your own space. You can play music, talk on the phone, etc. without worrying about disturbing the driver. You're not likely to have strong odors, or driver's phone conversations. And the experience will be roughly consistent each time. In an Uber, you have no idea what the car or the driving standards will be like until you're in it. I trust my own driving over a Waymo, but I'd trust Waymo over an average Uber driver, let alone a bad one.
I've had some nice conversations with Uber drivers, but I've had some unpleasant rides too. I'd definitely pay a bit extra for a good driverless car. ('Good' being key. After trying out the Tesla FSD beta a couple times though, you couldn't pay me to ride in one of those without the ability to grab control.)
There’s something to be said for being able to not be forced to deal with a person, but I see something different personally.
I’m “old” (40s) so I didn’t grow up with Uber. Maybe that colors my take.
I don’t want to hire random Joes. If I wanted to buy a lift from a random person, I’d expect it to be very cheap.
If I’m hiring someone to drive me from A to B I want a professional service. I want professional drivers in a fleet of maintained cars.
With Uber/Lift you don’t know. Many drives do a great job and treat their cars/passengers like they’re professionals. Others don’t.
The taxi industry sucked. They had no competition and could get lazy and do a terrible job and people still had to use them anyway. That needed fixing.
But I don’t think the lesson we should learn is “taxis bad” but “bad service is bad”. And Uber/Lyft being so variable is not a plus at their prices.
The professional driver in a professional fleet service exists. It existed in the taxi era too.
If you ever see an aggressive driver cutting their way through traffic in a perfectly maintained Escalade or Navigator heading towards the airport, that’s them.
Exactly, I will pay a premium for not having to deal with a human being in the car with me.
It's a dice roll: you could get a very extroverted driver who won't leave you alone, or someone who smells bad, or someone rude, or a distracted driver...
There's also the issue of tipping. I haven't been in a waymo but I generally tip well in Uber or Lyft. I wouldn't tip a robot. So at least to me $15+$5 tip vs $20 is pretty much a wash.
Why is anyone surprised that a smaller segment of the market will pay more for a safer ride in a luxury vehicle compared to a base model Lyft (which can be a barely drivable car with rank cloth interior where you can't even fit two people in the back seat)?
Next up, some one will post, "First class tickets cost more than coach."
Waymo will eventually have Waymo Comfort and Waymo Black.
Maybe it's my rampant misanthrope leanings, but even in more trivial things like choosing automated kiosks other staffed in CVS, I'm just more comfortable not having to make small talk with a person, worry if they're having a good day or not etc.
I'd happily pay 20 percent more to Waymo for that personless experience too.
It's interesting how American cultural expectations of forced social interaction may be having the effect of promoting automated systems as a reaction.
As someone who lives in Spain and has lived in the UK, the idea of choosing self-checkout at a supermarket to avoid small talk with a cashier sounds alien to me; we simply don't do that here. While cashiers will certainly chat with certain customers while scanning their items, it's either that they know each other or it was initiated by the customer. I always choose staffed checkout over self-checkout because it's literally less effort for me, but I could imagine American social expectations at checkout —"How are you doing today?", "Oh these apples look amazing!", "Having a party are we?"— absolutely tipping the balance of effort and pushing me to self-checkout.
If the automated systems work I'd use them. Instead, USA systems are designed around trying to prevent theft and they error in the store's favor. I've had those automated systems scream that I haven't put my purchase in the bag. The purchase being single envelope of yeast, too light to measure. So it screams and scream "PLEASE PLACE THE PRODUCT IN THE BAG", "PLEASE PLACE THE PRODUCT IN THE BAG", "PLEASE PLACE THE PRODUCT IN THE BAG", "PLEASE PLACE THE PRODUCT IN THE BAG" until some employee comes over and presses reset on the machines. Meanwhile the entire store is glaring at you.
So yea, I've stop using automated machines in the USA.
Exactly. You're not paying more for the same ride. You are paying to have some time alone. To not have to deal with others where you can listen to an audiobook, have a conversation on your phone that feels private or other things.
I mix and match but I’ll take a Waymo if it’s <= $5 more for these reasons:
1. Literally zero variance. Every car is the same. Every driver is the same style. If it says it’ll be there in 7 minutes it will be 7, not 5 and not 10.
2. A jaguar SUV is a premium vehicle. It’s comparable to an Uber black not a regular Uber.
3. It’s so child friendly. My son can make all the noise he wants and I can take time loading him in without a driver being impatient.
4. They’re very clean. I’ve never been in a dirty or bad smelling Waymo. That’s very nice.
5. No aggressive driving. I’ve had Ubers that scare me weaving between lanes above the speed limit. A Waymo is always smooth.
You’re experiencing the early pre-enshittified product. Ubers used to be cheap and excellent too, but then they started optimizing for profit. I assume this will happen even faster for Waymo, just because tech firms have more experience now.
People are excited by driverless cars but it also means a car with no social barriers and no person who considers the cars condition important. For now they’re well surveilled and a premium vehicle. Soon they will be filthy pods in a race to the bottom with all the charm of a public bathroom. They’ll be cheap, but you’ll get what you pay for. Private driverless cars will be the premium alternative.
did you report it? Ideally the person that left the bandages in the car would get flagged. They get flagged a few more times for littering in the car they get banned.
Yes, you don't know if it was the previous person, previous previous, etc but if they are a repeat litterer it won't take long to figure out who it is and warn them they'll lose their privilege to use the service if they continue to abuse it.
I'm willing to pay more for a better ride experience:
* Waymos are all the same. I underrated the value of this until I started taking Waymo more often.
* I can control the music and volume with my phone.
* I can listen to YouTube or take a call without AirPods. Sometimes I even hotspot and do some work.
But most importantly Waymos all _drive_ the same way. I have had some really perplexing Uber drivers, either driving in a confused and circuitous way, distracted by YouTube, or just driving dangerously. I am more confident that I will have a safe ride in a Waymo than in an Uber.
I've been picked up multiple times by Uber drivers who have, essentially, bragged? about being drunk or high.
I've also had multiple drivers in multiple countries try to sell me drugs.
I also once had a driver in Chile who, somehow, micro-slept in stop and go traffic every time the car was stopped (which, was actually fascinating, and would've been very concerning if we ever got going more than like 10 mph).
Women also have to worry about drivers trying to hit on them.
The list goes on.
It's not a surprise a lot of people will pay a premium to avoid all that.
This is the thing that people don't realize about autonomous AI.
It's not primarily about saving money.
Autonomous taxis are superior to Uber and yellow cabs. It's a better experience, and it's far safer. Autonomous cars aren't cheaper, they're better.
When AI agents replace human jobs, any cost savings is secondary. A coding job where the AI does most of the grunt work is superior to a job where humans do everything. It's better for the worker (less tedium). It's better for the employer (consistent style, greater test coverage, security vulns evaluated for every function, follows company policy and procedures).
AI agents done well are superior at call center jobs, screen-based office work, mortgage processing, financial analysis, most business consulting like process redesign, etc. The biggest benefit isn't reducing payroll, it's doing the job faster, with higher quality and more consistency.
I also had one of those drivers who would sleep in traffic. I assumed he was very sleepy deprived and it was stressing me out while we went over hwy 17 in Santa Cruz
> I also once had a driver in Chile who, somehow, micro-slept in stop and go traffic every time the car was stopped
Imagine how desperate you would have to be to drive a cab when you're that sleep-deprived (probably haven't slept in 36 hours). Now imagine someone took that income away from you to give it to Sundar Pichai.
Yeah, sometimes it's unpleasant talking to a cabby, and sometimes he won't take a hint and stop talking. But you might learn something if you try to engage, instead of vibe-coding inside a surveillance robot.
I'll never forget the driver who watched anime on his phone all the way from the San Diego airport to the hotel.
And all the drivers who seem to think driving with the windows down for 2 minutes will make it impossible to tell they were just smoking weed/cigs in the car.
Recent uber ignored us and listened to a fantasy audiobook on speakers whole way to airport. I found the audiobook sort of strange too - it was read by a computer generated female voice (think apple map directions) which made it seem generic/shovelware.
I’ve ridden in Ubers across Hwy 17 in Northern California and I’m pretty sure some of those drivers had never taken a non-90 degree corner in their life.
More than once I semi-jokingly texted people at work that if I didn’t make the next meeting it was because I met my untimely end in that car.
I rode my first Waymo last week through Inglewood and Santa Monica and I felt so much more safe than I have in other ridesharing systems.
I think ridesharing is not the end game for Waymo. If I could just straight up buy a personal vehicle that was a Waymo I’d do it tomorrow.
Same here. Waymo doesn’t make me feel car sick, while aggressiveness-incentivized uber/lyft drivers do.
Thinking of incentives, I wonder what happens when self driving is “solved” to the point they can start nickel and dime optimizing. I wonder if waymo starts driving overly aggressively at that point too.
A dime of commercially priced electricity is around a kWh depending on where you are. That'll take a car a lot further than you think, and the more aggressively you drive the more electricity gets used. The most efficient way to drive is the flattest, most leisurely route.
The only way aggressive driving becomes profitable is when you've exhausted your supply of cars. Even then, it's not clear to me that you'd increase profit in that time by driving faster, since one car over the course of a day might squeeze in one or two extra rides at most. Just having more cars that sit idle until needed would accomplish the same thing with no extra risk.
In fact, the biggest area for optimization is getting the car to the next rider from the end of a previous ride. But that's not about being fast, that's about positioning idle cars in the right places to minimize distance to potential riders. If pickup distance becomes a hard bottleneck, it's again about capacity, not speed. Most of the between-trip driving is not on highways and back roads, it's through dense areas with lots of stop signs and traffic lights, so increasing speed isn't even really feasible.
It's always a bad feeling when you get in the car and the driver is on the phone with someone and clearly starts talking about you in another language. Or even just mumbles something on the phone and you're not sure if they're talking to you or not (and they are, like 20% of the time). Super stressful.
This is where self-driving taxis could succeed. I don't want self-driving on my personal car because I am more trusting of my own abilities. But I have had too many Uber rides where I've seriously considered asking them to pull over and let me out. Never any accidents but some really dangerous driving and a couple of drivers where it was 50/50 whether they were drunk or high. I'll trust the self-driving over a random Uber driver every time.
> I have had some really perplexing Uber drivers, either driving in a confused and circuitous way, distracted by YouTube, or just driving dangerously.
A weird route is generally fine with me (as long as it doesn't increase travel time by much; remedy for that case is to decrease the tip), but driving distracted/dangerously is an automatic low rating from me. I am pretty much an "always 5 stars" kinda person, but safety issues are serious.
All this would do is cause noise pollution. Have you never had the displeasure of riding with someone who will leave their seatbelt unplugged despite the annoying beeping?
Waymos will get cheaper to make as they scale up. The Ioniq version [1] costs less to build. All the sheet metal and mechanical mods for Waymo are done at the Hyundai factory in Georgia.[2] Waymo just mounts the electronics.
Jobs at the Hyundai factory start at $23.66/hour, with reasonably good benefits.[3]
The other day I almost got ran over by an old lady in her old Volvo wagon at a stop sign. She seemed to have gotten confused a little and was turning left but couldn't figure out the right move to make. People behind her honked and she decided to just go for it. I happened to be in the crosswalk and just happened to look over at the honking, and saw her coming, so managed to jump out of her way.
She was easily over 90, if not over 95.
People like her could really benefit from a personal Waymo. Just sell a car with FSD built in, at the level of a Waymo, and bam! That would make so many senior citizens' lives easier!
this is 10000% the wrong approach— the approach is to build better, more walkable cities, with better zoning, and public transit so elderly or disabled people aren’t left out of society.
these people shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a car; to me one of the biggest annoyances with american life
Hell, it’ll make MY life easier. Can’t wait for the day where I can do whatever the hell I want while my car drives itself. Affluent seniors that shouldn’t be driving are an obvious market and it would have been helpful for those in my life, too.
We're far from them doing it, but I have to imagine at some point Waymo, assuming they survive, will operate similar to Uber and Lyft in terms of pricing vs vehicle type. They have to realize how critical consistency-of-ride is so I'm not suggesting they'll have tons of options, but they will "have to" tier their offering lest someone else comes along (assuming the tech becomes more widespread) and offers a tier they don't offer. At the least I would think they'll end up with a base ride (like an Ioniq or even something extremely basic), an Ioniq or Ioniq+ type in the middle and then some kind of larger, more luxurious option. I mean this as it relates to rideshare because I'm sure Waymo has had plenty of internal conversations about the various verticals they can eventually operate (shipping, mass transit, etc.).
Well it depends on their competition and what the market will bear. If they have competitors with a similar-quality product that is undercutting them on price, Waymo will have to lower prices to compete.
And regardless, there's always a ceiling when it comes to what people will pay. In the case of a robotaxi there's of course significant marginal cost to expand the fleet of vehicles, but if they can make more money with more cars at a lower price point (than fewer cars at a higher price point), then they'll do so.
In my experience, most price increases are in labor-intensive industries. Construction, etc.
Compare with tech, which is what a Waymo is like: computers, TVs, etc are insanely cheap compared to their equivalents in the past.
I had to point out to a Gen Zer complaining about how video game companies keep jacking up prices ("this game for the Switch is $80!") by pointing out that when you adjusted for inflation, a Super Nintendo game cost over $100 in today's money.
jags and ioniqs are a midway stop for sure. there's no need to have a seat you can't use with a steering wheel and windows that are not totally blacked out. the final product would probably resemble something closer to Cruise One concept.
I bet they will try and expand service area over expanding inventory. It's very expensive to keep cars in reserve for peak times, Uber gets around this by offloading the cost onto their drivers, but waymo will need to be able to pull cars from nearby areas.
$23.66/hour in Savannah, GA in 2025 is a starvation wage. Savannah has a bad housing squeeze with very few apartments and they still cost nearly $2K/mo when you find them. God bless those poor souls.
As a Waymo-booster on HN for a while now, here's my latest anecdote. I tried to figure out how to take Waymo to LAX even though it's not actually in their territory yet just because I value the experience so much. I was borderline going to take it within walking distance (about half a mile), but got lazy at the last minute. I took Lyft instead, and, as if the universe cursed my laziness, I booked a "comfort" car for $3 more than the base level Lyft. At first I was going to get a Tesla Model Y to take me, but that cancelled. Instead, what must have been a first generation Honda Pilot picked me up, suspension creaking and muffler that had seen better days. Did Lyft recognize what they sent instead of the "comfort" they promised and therefore charge me $3 less? Of course not. When I tried to contact customer service I ran into what I'm sure plenty of HN people have, which is a dead end where you report the issue and they (programmatically?) adjudicate the complaint on the spot. Their determination? I wasn't entitled to a $3 refund. Ironic that the rideshare app with human drivers doesn't allow me to contact their customer service whereas Waymo has no problem with it (yeah, yeah, I get it, "we'll see once they reach a huge scale." But today the experience is so much better than Uber or Lyft that while it lasts I will bask in its driverless glory).
I've had a couple bad experiences with Lyft recently, including one time the driver must have clicked that they picked me up while a block away, because I could see the lyft driving to the destination without me. I tried to get a refund since I was obviously waiting my start location the whole time, but the system claimed the drive went from start to finish (even though I wasn't in the car), so no refund.
Same thing happened to me, and the support system automatically decided nothing was wrong whatsoever despite my phone certainly sending a very different location from the driver. And the madness was I couldn't even book another ride as I was technically in one.
So I ended up getting it resolved via the security panic button which did put me through to a real person who was empathetic to the issue.
Uber lets you enable a PIN for each ride. The driver can't say they picked you up until they punch in the random 4 digit PIN the app gave you for the ride.
I waited 40 minutes for a Lyft at an airport because the driver made up a story about an accident and traffic, in the airport. No one else seemed to be affected by this traffic- so eventually I tried booking an Uber. It arrived 3 minutes later.
20 minutes after that the Lyft driver keeps texting me “where are you?!”. Their turn to wait!
Saw later they just started the ride without me and drove to my hotel.
Lyft said “this trip was completed, no refund”. Welp, app deleted.
That's must be annoying to say the least. In India drivers require an OTP to start a ride.
The OTP is the same for a user across rides, so I have mine memorised which is nifty. No fiddling with the phone during boarding.
On security: exploiting this would require the driver to stay in my vicinity the next time I book a ride, and also get the ride assigned to them.
In a high population density area, it's rare - I've never had the same driver twice.
I’ve heard the story from the other side as well: App reports ride is arriving, people get in, they go the wrong way and see their original ride stating that you are not there and leave again.
So it may not be intentional. Just coincidence and poor verification.
Companies that cheap out by not performing the basic obligations of business end up paying more for small claims court - provided their ripped-off customers actually take them to small claims court. Did you?
> Their determination? I wasn't entitled to a $3 refund.
Frustratingly, Lyft’s position on this is that if you don’t like the car that arrives you should reject it when it arrives, otherwise you’re not entitled to a (even partial) refund, even when they know on their end that the car they sent doesn’t match what you paid extra for.
This seems... interesting, legally speaking. I imagine the idea is that you're implicitly accepting alterations to the previous contract by opting to take the car? Would that argument hold water, legally?
Uber has done that to me. You pick a class but what you get seems unrelated.
I need more space for luggage and such and ... some "mid-sized" SUV picks me up that has about as much space a regular sedan anyway ... often the same type of vehicle that picked me up the previous day as a regular vehicle.
I paid extra and scheduled an Uber with a child seat. After waiting 30 minutes, when the car showed up, there was no car seat so the driver canceled right away and drove off. Lesson learned.
Same here. To alter-quote The Simpsons, "My eyes! The classes do nothing!"
Shortly after pandemic, I noticed "corridor fees" on vastly different routes which, mysteriously, bumped-up the price by the same percentage across each route--but only after the ride had completed. The price I was quoted was not remotely close to the price I was charged.
I did the customer service messaging thing. The first time, they removed it. The second and third time, they declined to remove it.
I now "decline" riding Uber unless there's no other option.
Uber seems wilfully deceptive in so many ways. The initial listing of rides including details of vehicles and prices, which looks like an actual offer, but the app then goes off to try and find something similar. Try being a shop, selling someone an item and then going out back to rummage around and see if you actually have anything like what you sold. And then the 'fixed price' you agreed on gets arbitrarily changed on half the trips if traffic gets worse or the driver takes a different route. If I book a trip from the airport, the airport's charge for rideshare lane usage isn't an "unanticipated expense". It's just skeezy.
Tip: You can take Waymo to just outside the economy lot, then hop on the shuttle to the terminals. The shuttles have their own dedicated lane for going around the loop, so this isn't even that much more time. It's my new favorite way to get to LAX.
Ah, I saw the economy lot as a potential option. I tried to get the location to resolve on the app, but I think I only tried the lot itself and not directly adjacent to it. Thank you for pointing this out!
Charges for goods not delivered as agreed falls under the protection of the Fair Credit Billing Act. If you made a good faith attempt to resolve with the merchant (which you did) you should use your credit card to charge back the amount (some let you request a partial charge back, but if not you can request a full one and explain in the extra info that you want a partial one).
This might not seem worth it for $3, but if they get a lot of these the credit cards/banks might start giving them a hard time about it, so I think it's worth the minor hassle (everything can be done via the credit card app usually)
> you should use your credit card to charge back the amount
Don't you end up getting a new credit card number and have to deal with updating your details everywhere after doing this?
> This might not seem worth it for $3
It seems it's also painful and seemingly not worth it by design. Whenever they can make the process so painful that going through it essentially pays way less than your wage they can get away with it 99% of the time.
Before Uber and Lyft destroyed the functioning taxi market, you got Mercedes by default for a traditional, regulated taxi in many EU countries.
You didn't have to argue, interact with a surveillance company, interact with customer service etc. All you needed to do is pick up the phone and get a luxury ride without tracking or surveillance.
My experience in my first-world country is that all I needed was to spend 10min on the phone to be told there’s no taxi available, or to be told it’ll take 30min and actually it take 1h30. Drivers aren’t any more amicable than uber drivers either (less, if anything).
Not to speak of many countries where taxis are outright scammers and getting into one is taking a real danger.
Was it? In many EU countries a lot of taxi drivers act like scammers: take you the long way around, they don't issue you receipt by default because they do tax fraud or steal from their employer, you can't pay by card because suddenly the card machine "doesn't work" so they drive you to an ATM, then you pay cash and they try to keep the change, they don't speak English or even the local language, they don't know the local streets or landmarks you're referring to because they're not from there, etc. All that is super annoying. Multiply it if you're a tourist or on a business trip or job interview.
Ride sharing fixed all that since you just punched in the destination in the app (in your own language) and got the price upfront and shielded you from the antics of scammy drivers and the friction of getting to your destination. That's why ride sharing apps were so successful initially.
It wasn't about the price, it was about the friction or lack thereof.
>you got Mercedes by default for a traditional, regulated taxi in many EU countries
Mostly IIRC Berlin, Brussels, Stockholm and some other rich countries, definitely not EU wide.
Yeah, before Uber and Lyft I would get a Mercedes.
Except that it took forever. I had no idea when anyone would show up. The driver was annoyed and drove like an insane person. The few times I've actually feared for my life have been on highways with taxi drivers. It was incredibly expensive.
Oh, and half the time they ripped you off.
Yup. And there was no tracking. So if that person wanted to say, drive an insane route? Enjoy. Take a detour. Done. Or dump your body in the woods. You were totally at their mercy.
The taxi system was horrible. The pinnacle of protectionism carving out its niche of crap.
The surveillance is exactly why Uber and Lyft works. If drivers misbehave, evidence is all there. I’d honestly trade reliability over a temporary luxury ride in a Mercedes.
Lol. Before Uber 'destroyed' the functioning taxi market in Amsterdam, getting a taxi after going out meant waiting for sometimes up to 45 minutes. It meant standing in a line and when someone cut the line in front of you, saying something about it could get you in a fight. Taxi drivers often were (former) criminals who cashed in their savings of black money to get a taxi license and a quiet life.
Occasionally tourists were robbed or taken on detours, good luck to get your money back in those days. And I'm not even mentioning the outrageous prices yet for a taxi drive in the city in those days.
Uber might not be 100% perfect but it has been a real blessing, a salvation of all the misery that we had to endure in the 'functioning' taxi market.
pfah, I remember my Mercedes trip to Paris airport where I had a physical fight with the driver (10 years ago). SO glad to see the taxi business go down the toilet. Easily over 50% of them were scamming tourists.
Uber and Lyft priced out those needless amenities and transferred into their profit margin. If customers has properly priced those in, the market would see that they are retained. Efficien-en-en-ent!
I've had the same many many times. I think almost universally it's fair that the product/provider upgrades your experience when you agree to pay for something, but when they are specifically telling you "pay x and we'll give you y" and then they give you <y that's, I think, shitty.
Of course, that happens, but the point is that it's a crapshoot, and you don't know what you're gonna get until the driver confirms, and you don't know what the car's actual condition is until you get in. And regardless, it's always reasonable for someone to provide you a better service/product than you paid for, but it's never ok to do the opposite.
With Waymo, you know what you're going to get every time. I've also never experienced a Waymo interior that was in bad shape when I got in the car, though I'm sure that does happen to people.
$3 is small enough that almost everyone will just eat the cost. I have a theory that they do this intentionally in some things(well Uber I've never used lift). Almost every time I order food and something is wrong or missing they'll give me a refund that is $2-3 off what it should be. Like if I order a $5 item and it's missing their service will refund me $2. At that point I can chose to spend literally an hour going through different support flows to try to reach a human who will correct it and give me the extra $2 or I can eat the loss. It's happened to me at least a dozen times now so I imagine it's common enough across the whole world to add millions of revenue each year.
I'm not sure I'm reading you correctly, but if you mean it's a small problem because $3 isn't much money then, heck yes, it's a microscopic problem (is there something smaller than microscopic because if so then it's whatever that thing is)! But I didn't bring it up to complain about the $3 per se. I can elaborate, but I'm not sure if that's what you were specifically referring to or if I'm misunderstanding your question.
The $3 often makes the difference between someone that should not be allowed to have a drivers license, and a someone that's been driving high-end limos for years.
For example, I once had a driver that heard regenerative breaking was good for fuel economy, so decided to cycle their busted prius between 60mpg and 70mph every few seconds on the freeway. I was carsick for 2 hours after that ride. Another time, I had an angry line of people tapping the windows and politely giving the driver some unsolicited advice. (The mob was right; I mostly just tried to hide my face.)
So, the $3 is a big problem, but has nothing to do with money.
Its the principle, not the size of the cost. If a company with good customer service accidentally overcharged me $200 but I could call someone and have it fixed easily that would set me off far less than a company that screwed me out of $1 who has shit-tier dark pattern customer service.
Worth knowing that Uber bought Dantaxi, Denmark's largest Taxi company a couple of weeks ago. The Uber app will tap in to Dantaxi driver pool.
https://www.uber.com/en-DK/newsroom/dantaxi/
I wonder if strong worker unions and regulations forced Uber to buy an existing company rather than starting their own presence.
all "cab"-like cars that are not shaped like London Black Cabs are failures. The seating and luggage carrying is so much better than a regular car it makes me sick.
I'm on holiday in Japan at the moment and I notice the cabs look like London cabs and are mainly black too. Made by Toyota. I haven't yet taken one, so I don't know if the similarity extends to the interior layout.
Agreeed. My last uber and Lyft rides were an unpleasant experience of late pickups, cancelled pickups, and old rickety rides. I use the train over uber and lyft
I never heard this once before HN. What is particular about Teslas? Is it the rapid acceleration from the electric motor... or lack of familiar engine sound?
People don't hate automation. They hate BAD automation.
From your description seems like: Waymo -> Good Automation, Call Center -> Bad Automation.
The day we will have a chatgpt level automated customer care experience, we will complain every time humans answer our requests, with their accents and attitudes!
Oh man, hope it's ok to poke a little fun. I think we just violently agreed with me praising automation from one company and deriding automation from another. So I'll update your "seems like": Riding with Waymo (IME) -> Good Automation, Lyft customer support when they "stole" $3 from me and didn't provide me with a way to fix it -> Bad Automation.
Do you think it's bad automation? I think it's a cost optimisation thing, we don't give refunds and we don't give people a channel to complain. We only measure revenue from trips and as long as that stays up the service quality is ok.
People paying more for Waymo doesn’t surprise me. I also once called for a comfort car, but it was a filthy Lexus. I’d much rather ride in a clean and well maintained Corolla.
I pay more for Waymo and I’m happy to do it (as long as Waymo can detect when its interior is dirty so it can return itself to home base for cleaning.) I don’t have to sit awkwardly in a car with another guy who may drive in a way that annoys me. I can talk on my phone or with my family without having a random person listen in.
I have only used car share once in my life. (My mother ordered it, and it was fine.) To me, a dirty car is pretty much unforgivable as a car share service. Do you report it on the app or just give a one/zero star rating and hope the car share service will fix it?
> I don’t have to sit awkwardly in a car with another guy who may drive
You hit the nail on the head. I cannot belive that I am 100+ posts into this discussion and no one has mentioned it. It was the first idea that popped into my head. How about if you are woman? I would gladly pay a bit more to have no other strangers in the car with me.
The Uber comfort designation frustratingly has nothing to do with the condition of the vehicle. I believe the parameters are age, seats, and model.
From the driver's point of view, it just means that you are allowed to accept comfort rides but most of the time you're probably going to be picking up UberX passengers which are more plentiful. That means you're only slightly more likely to get one of the good comfort vehicles if you actually select the comfort tier.
A friend was recently in Milwaukee (first time ever. He was there for a conference).
He, his wife, and another friend, wanted to go out to eat.
They were given a wrong address. Could have been the source, or it could have been they screwed up writing it down. It was definitely a wrong address, though, that they gave to Uber.
The driver picked them up, and took them to the address, which was deep in Da Hood. Not a good area for three middle-class white folks to be wandering around.
The driver insisted they get out, even though it was clearly a wrong address, and a downright dangerous neighborhood (my friend has some experience with rough neighborhoods. If he said it was bad, it was bad).
My friend offered to pay whatever it took, to get to the correct address (they had figured out their mistake, by then), but the driver refused to do that. It was probably algorithmically prohibited.
My friend had never used Uber before (and never will, again), so wasn’t aware that you are supposed to be able to appeal to Uber.
I have a feeling that my friend offered to rearrange the driver’s dental work (Did I mention that he was familiar with tough neighborhoods?), and got the driver to drop them off in a better area, where they caught a cab.
Sounds like a bad customer experience. I doubt Uber ever heard the story. My friend never bothered contacting them, and I will bet that the driver didn’t.
If I was that driver, you bet I'd be contacting Uber to try and get your friend banned for life. Threatening a driver is never ok, even less so when it's not his fault.
If your friend thinks it's okay to threaten to assault a driver, especially for an issue that wasn't the driver's fault, then it sounds like "da hood" is where he belongs...
The only difference with the Waymo experience would be that there would be nobody your friend could threaten to assault for putting in the wrong address.
why do you think you will get better service with waymo when it's as established as the others?
the whole market is a race to the bottom to extract rent from what should have been a municipality cost center.
oh, do you like waymo automated support and driver better than Lyft automated support? or just can't imagine a world where tomorrow waymo will have aging cars too?
You’ve got to invest with the VC money. As companies mature and enshitification begins, jump onto the next hot thing that’s going to disrupt the now incumbent.
There’s no free lunch, but this is the closest we’ve got.
another anecdote taking Lyft - they showed me $10.76 price for a trip to the airport when Uber showed $21. obviously i called Lyft and they placed a temporary charge on my credit card for $10.76. Once the driver dropped me off, i noticed that the base charge jumped to $16.76 + airport fees and my total with tips came to a bit over $27. I contacted Lyft and they denied and claimed that they always showed me $16.76. smh. i have proof from my credit card that they placed a hold for $10.76 and yet they refused to adjust the price.
- To not feel weird about the little things like talking or rolling down my windows or setting an AC Temperature
- To know exactly when and where my driver will pick me up down to the exact curb.
- To not have to make small talk with a person. Even when requesting quiet preferred you’ll get an uber driver who wants to share their life story or trauma dump on you.
- To not die. I’ve been in some terrifying Ubers with either bad drivers or just exhausted ones.
And carsickness. In stop-sign city traffic, I get nauseous with the breaking and speeding of aggressive driving. I mean stop signs are problematic for other reasons too, but I don’t want to get to a dinner with friends feeling sick.
That said, if I’m going mostly highway to the airport I want a driver who’s knowledgeable and opportunistic, picking the best lanes and not missing lights.
The last time I got an Uber, it was driven by a young fellow who looked to be in his first year of driving (I could be wrong), the car smelled like mothballs and was obviously in poor shape, and he accidentally drove on the wrong side of a divided road for a block or so (he was apologetic). The last time I tried a regular taxi stand, the car looked even worse, and it broke down. So, we called Lyft, and the driver could not find where we were because it was not a normal address (she was trying her best, but her English was not up to the task of understanding our explanation).
Waymo's selling point might be that its cars are all in good shape (right now), and customers know this.
I formally report it every time I'm in a car that has the deodorizer turned up to 11 because it makes me nauseous. My worst one was a 30 minute ride to the airport in LA - I thought about just having them pull over and ordering a replacement
I've had this happen many times. One time, I got into an Uber and it smelled like there were 100 kilos of cocaine in the trunk. Not joke, the car reeked of coke.
I have zero clue if they still do, but based on my experiences lately with Uber and Lyft there's zero chance they fire drivers even if they have terrible reviews. I'm an "always 5 star" type of reviewer (sorry if you think I'm obligated to be honest!), but, man, it's rough out there at least in big cities in the US. Sorry that's not reliably answering your question, but even if Uber said they fire those people I would not for one second believe them.
Part of the problem with this system is that I’m hesitant to give a driver less than 5 stars (unless they are truly dangerous) because I don’t want to take someone’s livelihood away.
This is amazing. Don't forget that by you doing this you're taking us one step closer to AI replacing not just the job of drivers but the jobs of all of us. Good sides and bad sides.
Hopefully we won't get there and only uber drivers are the ones screwed. Since you and I aren't uber drivers, we don't really care do we?
I'm for equal opportunity screwing: if they lose their jobs, it's only fair my job is at risk too - and given improvements in programming agents, it will be.
The only way we're getting through this is by facing it together, not throwing the more precarious of us under the bus.
I'm not actually convinced that "AI" will even replace all the jobs of drivers. Rumor is that Waymo had trouble in Austin (where I live) when they were centered downtown, because they would gridlock. I'm not convinced that they will work well once they become common on the roads, because they will all drive cautiously, and that may lend itself to gridlock situations. Right now they're in the SE corner of town (also where I live), and they don't seem to gridlock, but the first thing they do is almost always to go to another part of town. They will likely have a useful place, but I'm not convinced that it will pay enough to keep the cars in good shape, long term. The cars are all new, right now, but what happens when they get old and start to malfunction? Will they be making enough money to pay for that? Right now they might (like Uber and Lyft before them) just be burning through VC money, without any prospect of profitability.
A robot isn’t going to decide it doesn’t want to take my ride after accepting it and drive around aimlessly hoping I’ll get tired of waiting and cancel. I haven’t needed Uber/Lyft on a regular basis in several years, but back when I did that was a frequently recurring problem.
There's also a problem of drivers discriminating, like canceling rides if they see you have a guide dog. It's illegal and they can get banned for it, but it still happens. This wouldn't happen in a Waymo.
Reliability was the main selling point for me ~10 years ago. You could also get a ride quickly. It's the total opposite now. I've missed a flight due to multiple cancellations. I've been left standing in dangerous areas of town for an hour late at night trying to get a ride. Now, for important things where possible, I'll take public transport. It's far more reliable.
If you want to compete with Uber, increase prices and increase reliability significantly. There are times when a lot of people will be more than happy to pay rather than risk their safety. Undo the enshittification.
This happens so much now. It's infuriating. I wish they would put a stop to this. A few weeks ago, I had multiple Uber drivers do this. Eventually, I gave up and ordered a Waymo because they were the only ones who would pick me up.
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I've had some nice conversations with Uber drivers, but I've had some unpleasant rides too. I'd definitely pay a bit extra for a good driverless car. ('Good' being key. After trying out the Tesla FSD beta a couple times though, you couldn't pay me to ride in one of those without the ability to grab control.)
I’m “old” (40s) so I didn’t grow up with Uber. Maybe that colors my take.
I don’t want to hire random Joes. If I wanted to buy a lift from a random person, I’d expect it to be very cheap.
If I’m hiring someone to drive me from A to B I want a professional service. I want professional drivers in a fleet of maintained cars.
With Uber/Lift you don’t know. Many drives do a great job and treat their cars/passengers like they’re professionals. Others don’t.
The taxi industry sucked. They had no competition and could get lazy and do a terrible job and people still had to use them anyway. That needed fixing.
But I don’t think the lesson we should learn is “taxis bad” but “bad service is bad”. And Uber/Lyft being so variable is not a plus at their prices.
I don't think I'd be able to book taxis (and pay in advance) using an app in my country, if Uber/Lyft didn't exist.
If you ever see an aggressive driver cutting their way through traffic in a perfectly maintained Escalade or Navigator heading towards the airport, that’s them.
Uber, in fact, still offers black cars (professional drivers) as an option.
It's a dice roll: you could get a very extroverted driver who won't leave you alone, or someone who smells bad, or someone rude, or a distracted driver...
Just let me sit in peace, alone with a robot.
Next up, some one will post, "First class tickets cost more than coach."
Waymo will eventually have Waymo Comfort and Waymo Black.
It's a criticism, because this same segment also realizes that a Waymo ride is WAY cheaper to operate than a human driven one.
Does Google ever delete those records? Being Google, I bet they don't.
I'd happily pay 20 percent more to Waymo for that personless experience too.
As someone who lives in Spain and has lived in the UK, the idea of choosing self-checkout at a supermarket to avoid small talk with a cashier sounds alien to me; we simply don't do that here. While cashiers will certainly chat with certain customers while scanning their items, it's either that they know each other or it was initiated by the customer. I always choose staffed checkout over self-checkout because it's literally less effort for me, but I could imagine American social expectations at checkout —"How are you doing today?", "Oh these apples look amazing!", "Having a party are we?"— absolutely tipping the balance of effort and pushing me to self-checkout.
So yea, I've stop using automated machines in the USA.
Dead Comment
I assume there are also industrial-strength cleaners during the downtime/refueling.
1. Literally zero variance. Every car is the same. Every driver is the same style. If it says it’ll be there in 7 minutes it will be 7, not 5 and not 10.
2. A jaguar SUV is a premium vehicle. It’s comparable to an Uber black not a regular Uber.
3. It’s so child friendly. My son can make all the noise he wants and I can take time loading him in without a driver being impatient.
4. They’re very clean. I’ve never been in a dirty or bad smelling Waymo. That’s very nice.
5. No aggressive driving. I’ve had Ubers that scare me weaving between lanes above the speed limit. A Waymo is always smooth.
If they get worse, I’ll. Choose something else if I want.
They’re not in my area today, but just because they may get worse does t mean you should avoid them today.
Yes, you don't know if it was the previous person, previous previous, etc but if they are a repeat litterer it won't take long to figure out who it is and warn them they'll lose their privilege to use the service if they continue to abuse it.
* Waymos are all the same. I underrated the value of this until I started taking Waymo more often.
* I can control the music and volume with my phone.
* I can listen to YouTube or take a call without AirPods. Sometimes I even hotspot and do some work.
But most importantly Waymos all _drive_ the same way. I have had some really perplexing Uber drivers, either driving in a confused and circuitous way, distracted by YouTube, or just driving dangerously. I am more confident that I will have a safe ride in a Waymo than in an Uber.
I've also had multiple drivers in multiple countries try to sell me drugs.
I also once had a driver in Chile who, somehow, micro-slept in stop and go traffic every time the car was stopped (which, was actually fascinating, and would've been very concerning if we ever got going more than like 10 mph).
Women also have to worry about drivers trying to hit on them.
The list goes on.
It's not a surprise a lot of people will pay a premium to avoid all that.
It's not primarily about saving money.
Autonomous taxis are superior to Uber and yellow cabs. It's a better experience, and it's far safer. Autonomous cars aren't cheaper, they're better.
When AI agents replace human jobs, any cost savings is secondary. A coding job where the AI does most of the grunt work is superior to a job where humans do everything. It's better for the worker (less tedium). It's better for the employer (consistent style, greater test coverage, security vulns evaluated for every function, follows company policy and procedures).
AI agents done well are superior at call center jobs, screen-based office work, mortgage processing, financial analysis, most business consulting like process redesign, etc. The biggest benefit isn't reducing payroll, it's doing the job faster, with higher quality and more consistency.
Imagine how desperate you would have to be to drive a cab when you're that sleep-deprived (probably haven't slept in 36 hours). Now imagine someone took that income away from you to give it to Sundar Pichai.
Yeah, sometimes it's unpleasant talking to a cabby, and sometimes he won't take a hint and stop talking. But you might learn something if you try to engage, instead of vibe-coding inside a surveillance robot.
And all the drivers who seem to think driving with the windows down for 2 minutes will make it impossible to tell they were just smoking weed/cigs in the car.
More than once I semi-jokingly texted people at work that if I didn’t make the next meeting it was because I met my untimely end in that car.
I rode my first Waymo last week through Inglewood and Santa Monica and I felt so much more safe than I have in other ridesharing systems.
I think ridesharing is not the end game for Waymo. If I could just straight up buy a personal vehicle that was a Waymo I’d do it tomorrow.
Thinking of incentives, I wonder what happens when self driving is “solved” to the point they can start nickel and dime optimizing. I wonder if waymo starts driving overly aggressively at that point too.
The only way aggressive driving becomes profitable is when you've exhausted your supply of cars. Even then, it's not clear to me that you'd increase profit in that time by driving faster, since one car over the course of a day might squeeze in one or two extra rides at most. Just having more cars that sit idle until needed would accomplish the same thing with no extra risk.
In fact, the biggest area for optimization is getting the car to the next rider from the end of a previous ride. But that's not about being fast, that's about positioning idle cars in the right places to minimize distance to potential riders. If pickup distance becomes a hard bottleneck, it's again about capacity, not speed. Most of the between-trip driving is not on highways and back roads, it's through dense areas with lots of stop signs and traffic lights, so increasing speed isn't even really feasible.
This is where self-driving taxis could succeed. I don't want self-driving on my personal car because I am more trusting of my own abilities. But I have had too many Uber rides where I've seriously considered asking them to pull over and let me out. Never any accidents but some really dangerous driving and a couple of drivers where it was 50/50 whether they were drunk or high. I'll trust the self-driving over a random Uber driver every time.
A weird route is generally fine with me (as long as it doesn't increase travel time by much; remedy for that case is to decrease the tip), but driving distracted/dangerously is an automatic low rating from me. I am pretty much an "always 5 stars" kinda person, but safety issues are serious.
Why don't we have a feature to brake or at least beep when tailgating? 2 car lengths at 80 mph is not ok.
Definitely. 2 seconds is OK, but 3 is better
Jobs at the Hyundai factory start at $23.66/hour, with reasonably good benefits.[3]
[1] https://waymo.com/blog/2024/10/waymo-and-hyundai-enter-partn...
[2] https://www.hmgma.com/
[3] https://careers-americas.hyundai.com/hmgma/job/Ellabell-Prod...
She was easily over 90, if not over 95.
People like her could really benefit from a personal Waymo. Just sell a car with FSD built in, at the level of a Waymo, and bam! That would make so many senior citizens' lives easier!
these people shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a car; to me one of the biggest annoyances with american life
[1] https://waymo.com/blog/2025/04/waymo-and-toyota-outline-stra...
Meaning their profits will rise as they inevitably increase prices
And regardless, there's always a ceiling when it comes to what people will pay. In the case of a robotaxi there's of course significant marginal cost to expand the fleet of vehicles, but if they can make more money with more cars at a lower price point (than fewer cars at a higher price point), then they'll do so.
Compare with tech, which is what a Waymo is like: computers, TVs, etc are insanely cheap compared to their equivalents in the past.
I had to point out to a Gen Zer complaining about how video game companies keep jacking up prices ("this game for the Switch is $80!") by pointing out that when you adjusted for inflation, a Super Nintendo game cost over $100 in today's money.
https://insideevs.com/photos/802937/waymo-zeekr-robotaxi/#69...
And the Hyundai Metaplant is not in Savannah itself.
> In Chatham County, the living wage per hour necessary for one adult with no children is $22.46
https://www.savannahnow.com/story/news/2024/12/09/what-is-a-...
So I ended up getting it resolved via the security panic button which did put me through to a real person who was empathetic to the issue.
20 minutes after that the Lyft driver keeps texting me “where are you?!”. Their turn to wait!
Saw later they just started the ride without me and drove to my hotel.
Lyft said “this trip was completed, no refund”. Welp, app deleted.
The OTP is the same for a user across rides, so I have mine memorised which is nifty. No fiddling with the phone during boarding.
On security: exploiting this would require the driver to stay in my vicinity the next time I book a ride, and also get the ride assigned to them. In a high population density area, it's rare - I've never had the same driver twice.
So it may not be intentional. Just coincidence and poor verification.
Frustratingly, Lyft’s position on this is that if you don’t like the car that arrives you should reject it when it arrives, otherwise you’re not entitled to a (even partial) refund, even when they know on their end that the car they sent doesn’t match what you paid extra for.
I need more space for luggage and such and ... some "mid-sized" SUV picks me up that has about as much space a regular sedan anyway ... often the same type of vehicle that picked me up the previous day as a regular vehicle.
Shortly after pandemic, I noticed "corridor fees" on vastly different routes which, mysteriously, bumped-up the price by the same percentage across each route--but only after the ride had completed. The price I was quoted was not remotely close to the price I was charged.
I did the customer service messaging thing. The first time, they removed it. The second and third time, they declined to remove it.
I now "decline" riding Uber unless there's no other option.
This might not seem worth it for $3, but if they get a lot of these the credit cards/banks might start giving them a hard time about it, so I think it's worth the minor hassle (everything can be done via the credit card app usually)
Don't you end up getting a new credit card number and have to deal with updating your details everywhere after doing this?
> This might not seem worth it for $3
It seems it's also painful and seemingly not worth it by design. Whenever they can make the process so painful that going through it essentially pays way less than your wage they can get away with it 99% of the time.
You didn't have to argue, interact with a surveillance company, interact with customer service etc. All you needed to do is pick up the phone and get a luxury ride without tracking or surveillance.
Not to speak of many countries where taxis are outright scammers and getting into one is taking a real danger.
Was it? In many EU countries a lot of taxi drivers act like scammers: take you the long way around, they don't issue you receipt by default because they do tax fraud or steal from their employer, you can't pay by card because suddenly the card machine "doesn't work" so they drive you to an ATM, then you pay cash and they try to keep the change, they don't speak English or even the local language, they don't know the local streets or landmarks you're referring to because they're not from there, etc. All that is super annoying. Multiply it if you're a tourist or on a business trip or job interview.
Ride sharing fixed all that since you just punched in the destination in the app (in your own language) and got the price upfront and shielded you from the antics of scammy drivers and the friction of getting to your destination. That's why ride sharing apps were so successful initially.
It wasn't about the price, it was about the friction or lack thereof.
>you got Mercedes by default for a traditional, regulated taxi in many EU countries
Mostly IIRC Berlin, Brussels, Stockholm and some other rich countries, definitely not EU wide.
Except that it took forever. I had no idea when anyone would show up. The driver was annoyed and drove like an insane person. The few times I've actually feared for my life have been on highways with taxi drivers. It was incredibly expensive.
Oh, and half the time they ripped you off.
Yup. And there was no tracking. So if that person wanted to say, drive an insane route? Enjoy. Take a detour. Done. Or dump your body in the woods. You were totally at their mercy.
The taxi system was horrible. The pinnacle of protectionism carving out its niche of crap.
Uber might not be 100% perfect but it has been a real blessing, a salvation of all the misery that we had to endure in the 'functioning' taxi market.
With Waymo, you know what you're going to get every time. I've also never experienced a Waymo interior that was in bad shape when I got in the car, though I'm sure that does happen to people.
I miss rideshare service, in Denmark we have mess of expensive high quality taxis that you cannot get hold of when you need one.
For example, I once had a driver that heard regenerative breaking was good for fuel economy, so decided to cycle their busted prius between 60mpg and 70mph every few seconds on the freeway. I was carsick for 2 hours after that ride. Another time, I had an angry line of people tapping the windows and politely giving the driver some unsolicited advice. (The mob was right; I mostly just tried to hide my face.)
So, the $3 is a big problem, but has nothing to do with money.
You're right -- it's surprising Lyft wouldn't just give back $3 (such a small amount!) to keep a customer.
Its the principle, not the size of the cost. If a company with good customer service accidentally overcharged me $200 but I could call someone and have it fixed easily that would set me off far less than a company that screwed me out of $1 who has shit-tier dark pattern customer service.
I wonder if strong worker unions and regulations forced Uber to buy an existing company rather than starting their own presence.
It's the same car. They just charge you $3 more for thinking you're going to get something nicer. You're not.
From your description seems like: Waymo -> Good Automation, Call Center -> Bad Automation.
The day we will have a chatgpt level automated customer care experience, we will complain every time humans answer our requests, with their accents and attitudes!
"TALK TO A ROBOT"
This is not true.
I pay more for Waymo and I’m happy to do it (as long as Waymo can detect when its interior is dirty so it can return itself to home base for cleaning.) I don’t have to sit awkwardly in a car with another guy who may drive in a way that annoys me. I can talk on my phone or with my family without having a random person listen in.
From the driver's point of view, it just means that you are allowed to accept comfort rides but most of the time you're probably going to be picking up UberX passengers which are more plentiful. That means you're only slightly more likely to get one of the good comfort vehicles if you actually select the comfort tier.
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A friend was recently in Milwaukee (first time ever. He was there for a conference).
He, his wife, and another friend, wanted to go out to eat.
They were given a wrong address. Could have been the source, or it could have been they screwed up writing it down. It was definitely a wrong address, though, that they gave to Uber.
The driver picked them up, and took them to the address, which was deep in Da Hood. Not a good area for three middle-class white folks to be wandering around.
The driver insisted they get out, even though it was clearly a wrong address, and a downright dangerous neighborhood (my friend has some experience with rough neighborhoods. If he said it was bad, it was bad).
My friend offered to pay whatever it took, to get to the correct address (they had figured out their mistake, by then), but the driver refused to do that. It was probably algorithmically prohibited.
My friend had never used Uber before (and never will, again), so wasn’t aware that you are supposed to be able to appeal to Uber.
I have a feeling that my friend offered to rearrange the driver’s dental work (Did I mention that he was familiar with tough neighborhoods?), and got the driver to drop them off in a better area, where they caught a cab.
Sounds like a bad customer experience. I doubt Uber ever heard the story. My friend never bothered contacting them, and I will bet that the driver didn’t.
the whole market is a race to the bottom to extract rent from what should have been a municipality cost center.
oh, do you like waymo automated support and driver better than Lyft automated support? or just can't imagine a world where tomorrow waymo will have aging cars too?
There’s no free lunch, but this is the closest we’ve got.
Dead Comment
- To support cool technology
- To ride in a high end car of known quality
- To listen to my music and at any volume
- To not feel weird about the little things like talking or rolling down my windows or setting an AC Temperature
- To know exactly when and where my driver will pick me up down to the exact curb.
- To not have to make small talk with a person. Even when requesting quiet preferred you’ll get an uber driver who wants to share their life story or trauma dump on you.
- To not die. I’ve been in some terrifying Ubers with either bad drivers or just exhausted ones.
That said, if I’m going mostly highway to the airport I want a driver who’s knowledgeable and opportunistic, picking the best lanes and not missing lights.
Waymo's selling point might be that its cars are all in good shape (right now), and customers know this.
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Another Waymo selling point is its universal (since they're all the same) ability to communicate with anyone.
Hopefully we won't get there and only uber drivers are the ones screwed. Since you and I aren't uber drivers, we don't really care do we?
The only way we're getting through this is by facing it together, not throwing the more precarious of us under the bus.
I mean, you're not wrong, but I feel like it's a condemnation of out economic system.
If you want to compete with Uber, increase prices and increase reliability significantly. There are times when a lot of people will be more than happy to pay rather than risk their safety. Undo the enshittification.