Waymo just launched a new $29.99-per-month "Premier" service in a select few of its cities. The member benefits include priority pickups, 10% cash back (sometimes more during busy times), early access to new Waymo cities, and flexible cancellations (up to five per month). Generally speaking, it feels pretty similar to Uber One, except it's 3x the cost. But if you spend more than $300 per month on Waymo trips, then the 10% cash back does pay for the service. We're now also talking about autonomous vehicles. Will that make a difference?
One of the early promises of Uber was that it was going to disrupt car ownership. People would just ride-hail. But as far as I can tell, that has not happened at scale. In the case of autonomous vehicles, one of the early promises was that if you took out the labour-cost component of ride hailing (i.e., the driver), you could then make rides really cheap and that would induce demand. But that too has not been the case thus far. In fact, riders seem to be willing to pay a premium to be in the car alone. This premium appears to be reflected in the price of Waymo Premier.
Where we got it wrong with Uber is that it ended up replacing taxis, not car ownership. But will autonomy and a nicer car experience change this? I like my car because I picked it, I use it to get where I have to go, and I store some of my stuff in it (including a fancy new car seat). But broadly speaking, I hate driving. If Waymo could fulfill my needs for, say, C$300/month, it would be in my economic interest to switch. I would have a very high willingness to pay if this is what I were replacing.
Changing consumer behaviour is hard, especially when we've built entire cities around a particular mode of transport. But sometimes products and services have seemingly subtle differences that surprise us in the way that the market responds to them. Will that be the case with Waymo? We shall see.
One of the least understood aspects of self-driving cars is the extent and capacity to which they rely on remote assistance operators (RAOs).
When a self-driving car finds itself confused in an uncertain or tricky situation (like when one rolled into an active shootout), there are typically two safety valves. The first is a manual override, where someone like a first responder might jump into the front seat and take control of the steering wheel. And the second is assistance from a remote operator.
If the car gets confused, a human can tell it, "Hey, you, follow this path." But how often is remote assistance being called upon? And who is actually responding on the other end? Apparently, the answer is, "I don't know."
According to a recent report from Senator Ed Markey, every major AV company refuses to disclose how often they rely on an RAO. And in the case of Waymo, they rely on overseas operators in places like the Philippines.
This has led to new proposed legislation that would, among other things, limit the number of vehicles that a single RAO can oversee, mandate that the RAO be located in the US, and require the humans to hold a local driver's license. You know, so they're sure to know the rules of the road.
There's a lot to figure out, and it seems a bit messy. But that's what it takes. As one would expect, this is par for the course when you're trying to rewrite urban mobility.
Cover photo by Leo_Visions on Unsplash
We’ve been talking about the merits of congestion pricing for as long as I’ve been writing this blog. But it remains politically unpopular, despite the overwhelming evidence that it consistently does what it’s supposed to do: it reduces congestion, shortens commute times, improves air quality, and raises money for alternative modes of transport, among other things.
The status quo bias is strong, but right now we have an opportunity. Self-driving cars are in the midst of shifting the mobility landscape, and there’s a growing belief that (1) roads are going to need to be more accurately priced to deal with the surge in demand, and (2) this is a moment in time that grants us the opportunity to do it. Here’s a recent tweet by Chris Spoke of Toronto Standard that makes this point and that I agree with.
The basic idea behind point number two is that many voters don’t like the idea of a congestion charge for themselves, but will probably mind a charge on robot cars a lot less — both because they are robot cars and because there are relatively few of them on the road today. However, at some point, robot cars will form the majority of vehicles on the road, so now would be a good time to establish new practices.
What do you think?
Cover photo by Minku Kang on Unsplash