Waymo's self-driving cars, everyday vehicles, tourist attractions, and symbols of the not-too-distant future, have become a part of life in a growing number of American cities, but their market dominance is far from assured.
While Tesla is expected to launch its first self-driving taxi service in Austin, Texas, this month after several delays, Waymo is announcing more than 250,000 rides per week in Phoenix, Arizona, San Francisco, Los Angeles, California, and Austin (via Uber).
In San Francisco, residents are no longer thrilled with the steering wheels that "spin automatically," but for tourists or business people, the first ride in a Waymo vehicle is the most memorable experience of their visit to the American city.
This success isn't limited to visitors. At the beginning of the year, the Alphabet subsidiary (Google's parent company) had a 27% market share in the California city, according to Yepte Data.
This overtook Lyft, the second-largest taxi company with drivers in the United States. Uber, meanwhile, held a share of over 50%.
Waymo didn't launch its commercial service in the city until 2023 and has only been available to the public for a year.
"People are getting comfortable very quickly because they think these cars are safer than those driven by humans," says Billy Riggs, a professor of engineering at the University of San Francisco.
He and his students are conducting research on these vehicles and their integration into everyday life.
Note that more than a third of users earn less than $100,000 a year, the average salary in the tech capital, despite higher prices compared to Uber's and often long wait times.
Riggs points to three factors that explain this success: safety, the absence of a driver, and the good condition of the vehicles.
According to a recent study conducted by Waymo over more than 90 million kilometers, its self-driving cars reduce pedestrian collisions by 92% and collisions resulting in injuries by 96% at intersections.
"Even when humans provoke them, they remain calm," Riggs jokes. These are improved versions of "A."
By gathering information about drivers' behavior on the road and tweaking the algorithms made by engineers, Waymo's cars have adopted "human-like reactions while driving," according to the researcher.
"They can get a little closer to an intersection to see if they can negotiate it, or speed up a little to make a last-minute left turn at an orange light, for example," he says, adding, "These are legal maneuvers, but they're similar to human behavior and more aggressive than defensive."
These cars are also known for their speed and smooth stopping. "It's like skidding on butter, my kids say," Riggs says. "They hate driving our Tesla."
The deterioration of its main competitor, Cruise, following a San Francisco crash and a disastrous management crisis, has propelled the Alphabet subsidiary to the top spot in the market.
The company plans to launch services in Atlanta, Miami, and Washington, D.C., in 2020. 2026.
But to truly scale, the company must adapt to different regulations, and above all, it needs more vehicles.
The company currently has 1,500 vehicles distributed across the four cities it serves. In early May, it announced it would manufacture an additional 2,000 Jaguar I-Pace electric vehicles next year, all equipped with self-driving technology.
Each such vehicle costs about $100,000, said Dmitry Dolgov, a Waymo executive, during an interview with the Shack 15 Conversation podcast.
Profitability is still far off. In the first quarter of the fiscal year, Alphabet's Other Bets division, which includes Waymo, posted a net loss of $1.2 billion.
"It has a clear path ahead, but there are failure scenarios," Riggs says. "It's not out of the question that a Chinese competitor could advance and seize the majority of the market."
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