Waymo Reports 250,000 Paid Robotaxi Rides Per Week In US (cnbc.com)
- Reference: 0177128821
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/04/24/2311230/waymo-reports-250000-paid-robotaxi-rides-per-week-in-us
- Source link: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/24/waymo-reports-250000-paid-robotaxi-rides-per-week-in-us.html
> "We can't possibly do it all ourselves," said Pichai on a call with analysts for Alphabet's first-quarter earnings. Pichai noted that Waymo has not entirely defined its long-term business model, and there is "future optionality around personal ownership" of vehicles equipped with Waymo's self-driving technology. The company is also exploring the ways it can scale up its operations, he said.
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> The 250,000 paid rides per week are up from 200,000 in February, before Waymo opened in Austin and expanded in the San Francisco Bay Area in March. Waymo, which is part of Alphabet's Other Bets segment, is already running its commercial, driverless ride-hailing services in the San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin regions.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/24/waymo-reports-250000-paid-robotaxi-rides-per-week-in-us.html
So we've got about 15 million taxi drivers (Score:2)
Of one kind or another. And for the most part being a taxi cab driver or an Uber driver is a job of last resort. Remember the people who own the medals aren't usually the ones actually driving the vehicle...
Anyway we're going to add 15 million people to the list of permanently unemployed and unemployable. What do you think is going to happen there?
Feel free to list the jobs these people are going to take. I'll wait.
One of the frustrating things is how little history we actually teach kids. When
Re: (Score:2)
[1]The US dept. of labor statistics says there are less than 400k taxi drivers [bls.gov]; chat-gpt says there are about 1M rideshare drivers.
You seem to be overestimating the number by more than an order of magnitude.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/taxi-drivers-and-chauffeurs.htm
Re: (Score:2)
I found this [1]https://www.scmo.net/faq/2019/... [scmo.net] which states "In 2016, there were an estimated 18 million taxis in the world."
So I believe the 15 million figure is for the whole world. It is probably a little low but it would also be reasonable to assume that as least some drivers would find other work so is perhaps closer to the mark than it would, at first, appear.
[1] https://www.scmo.net/faq/2019/8/9/how-many-taxis-is-there-in-the-world
Waymo has delivered (Score:2)
I had been fortunate to ride with an employee in the pre-beta days (only employees got to "hail" a ride), and then as an early rider in a targeted city, and now as a semi-regular rider in another city (I also was, in a previous life, a semi-regular taxi rider in one of the largest taxi cities in the US). The Waymo robotaxi's can be extremely conservative in some of their choices, but I would schedule (and ride) them in an instant, as they just work and are competitive in pricing. And that, in the end, wi
Wow! (Score:2)
That's way mo' than I thought it would be!
I'll show myself out...