Waymo plots Dallas robotaxi launch, stays ahead of Tesla in Texas turf war With Tesla horning in on its Texas territory, robotaxi outfit Waymo has decided to expand to a new city in the Lone Star state: Dallas. Waymo announced on Monday that it will launch the venture next year in partnership with car rental outfit Avis Budget Group. Avis will manage all Waymo vehicles in Dallas, with the agency …
. . . I have no idea who the CEO of Waymo is. That person is clearly doing hard work in the background, getting the company to iterate through technical problems and gradually improving the reliability and trustworthiness of the Waymo product. They're working with states and cities to get permission to operate and successfully deploying into new markets with fanfare but without drama. The company is clearly executing on its vision in a low-key way that speaks for itself rather than needing an egotistical braggart with a megaphone to promote the brand.
It's also a very different approach that is obviously based on eventually licensing the technology. Musk prefers to own – or at least to pretend to – own the entire value chain and use brand recognition to drive demand. This is more difficult in regulated markets so the obvious solution: deregulate! Eventually all of the bugs wil be worked out of the system and, does it really matter if a few poor people on bikes have to die in the process?
Waymo's approach should make the business less capital intensive for it, which in turn should allow for faster scaling. The technology is impressive but let's not forget it's currently limited to cities with regular street grids and predictable weather! Musk will presumably continue to rely on publicity stunts to gain attention and capital.
I've driven in San Francisco and it's a dream compared with most European cities and let's not even mention South Asia, Latin America of, Continent without Maps, Africa. Got to be a toss up between Lagos, Karachi and Mumbai for the worst places in the world to drive, though I'm sure there are other contenders.
Los Angeles, where large stretches of Wilshire Boulevard have been construction sites (for the subway extension) for years might not qualify as having a regular street grid. I've taken a number of 30 minute or longer Waymo rides here and it's handled construction sites, homeless people standing in the middle of the street screaming, traffic lights on the blink, traffic jams and the LAPD blocking off Wilshire Boulevard to search for a suspect with helicopters overhead with searchlights. It's pretty good at changing routes as needed and on a number of occasions has been less expensive than a conventional taxi would have been. I was skeptical, but it seems to work pretty well.
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