About a year ago, I wrote this post saying that autonomous vehicles were already safer than human-driven ones. This claim was based on safety data from Waymo and about 22 million rider-only miles. (Rider-only means no human driver.) A year later, Waymo now has over 96 million rider-only miles across Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Austin (through to June 2025) — and their safety record is only becoming more compelling.
Here's an updated data set and a chart showing any-injury-reported crashes (average benchmark vs. Waymo):
About a year ago, I wrote this post saying that autonomous vehicles were already safer than human-driven ones. This claim was based on safety data from Waymo and about 22 million rider-only miles. (Rider-only means no human driver.) A year later, Waymo now has over 96 million rider-only miles across Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Austin (through to June 2025) — and their safety record is only becoming more compelling.
Here's an updated data set and a chart showing any-injury-reported crashes (average benchmark vs. Waymo):
What immediately stands out is that Waymo has virtually eliminated the most common and deadly type of crash: vehicle-to-vehicle crashes within intersections. Compared to the benchmark, they are down 96%. They've also reduced single-vehicle crashes by 96%, pedestrian crashes by 92%, motorcycle crashes by 89%, and cyclist crashes by 78%. These are all remarkable figures and evidence that we are solving one of society's greatest safety problems.
It also tells me that, as humans, our driving days are numbered. Pretty soon nobody will want us behind the wheel of a car. It will be viewed as too dangerous. And that's fine by me.
Waymo has just been granted approval to test its autonomous vehicles in New York City. The permit allows up to eight of the company's Jaguar SUVs to circulate in Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn. And according to the company, the plan is to start "immediately." This first approval only runs until the end of September, after which it will need to be extended — but I'm guessing that shouldn't be too difficult to obtain.
What's noteworthy about this announcement is that (1) New York City is a big and complex place and (2) it's the first city for Waymo that receives snow. The company currently operates in San Francisco, Austin, Phoenix, and Los Angeles.
That said, the company has been doing cold weather testing since, I think, 2012. And in 2016, they opened a 53,000-square-foot self-driving center in Michigan for this purpose. They've also run tests in Truckee, California, Upstate New York, and the Detroit area. So presumably its sensors are ready to melt snow and ice. But it's looking like the true test will be on the streets of New York.
One thing that I do not do on this blog is provide investment advice. And this post is certainly not that. But here's an idea and thought exercise that relates to urban mobility. Let's assume you own a personal vehicle that is currently valued at US$30k, and that this car is what you use to go about your daily life. Now imagine that you sold this car today, harvested all of the proceeds, and invested them into the following three companies: Uber, Alphabet, and Tesla. If you did this equally, your US$30k would end up as the following (based on today's share prices and if rounded down):
111 shares in Uber ($89.56/share)
49 shares in Alphabet ($201.42/share)
30 shares in Tesla ($329.68/share)
Then, instead of driving yourself around, you'd put the money that you would have normally spent on insurance, gas, and maintenance toward Ubers and Waymos (assuming Waymo is available in your city). Perhaps you even own a parking spot that could be rented out for an extra few hundred dollars each month. Whatever the specifics, let's just assume that what you used to spend to operate and service your car is now being spent on getting around using ride sharing services. It's a wash. So the only difference is that instead of having US$30k tied up in a depreciating asset, you're now part owner of the above three businesses.
This, once again, is not investment advice. I personally don't know how to make sense of Tesla's current valuation. There's a hell of a lot of optimism being priced in. I'm simply picking these three companies as a way to bet on Waymo's autonomous vehicle program (which is currently in the lead), Tesla's robotaxi promises (which, who knows, could actually materialize), and the fact that Uber might still remain the dominant marketplace for rides (though there's already evidence that Waymo is on track to overtake Uber in San Francisco within the next ~8 months).
It's not clear who will be the primary beneficiary of this shifting mobility landscape. Is Tesla right about
What immediately stands out is that Waymo has virtually eliminated the most common and deadly type of crash: vehicle-to-vehicle crashes within intersections. Compared to the benchmark, they are down 96%. They've also reduced single-vehicle crashes by 96%, pedestrian crashes by 92%, motorcycle crashes by 89%, and cyclist crashes by 78%. These are all remarkable figures and evidence that we are solving one of society's greatest safety problems.
It also tells me that, as humans, our driving days are numbered. Pretty soon nobody will want us behind the wheel of a car. It will be viewed as too dangerous. And that's fine by me.
Waymo has just been granted approval to test its autonomous vehicles in New York City. The permit allows up to eight of the company's Jaguar SUVs to circulate in Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn. And according to the company, the plan is to start "immediately." This first approval only runs until the end of September, after which it will need to be extended — but I'm guessing that shouldn't be too difficult to obtain.
What's noteworthy about this announcement is that (1) New York City is a big and complex place and (2) it's the first city for Waymo that receives snow. The company currently operates in San Francisco, Austin, Phoenix, and Los Angeles.
That said, the company has been doing cold weather testing since, I think, 2012. And in 2016, they opened a 53,000-square-foot self-driving center in Michigan for this purpose. They've also run tests in Truckee, California, Upstate New York, and the Detroit area. So presumably its sensors are ready to melt snow and ice. But it's looking like the true test will be on the streets of New York.
One thing that I do not do on this blog is provide investment advice. And this post is certainly not that. But here's an idea and thought exercise that relates to urban mobility. Let's assume you own a personal vehicle that is currently valued at US$30k, and that this car is what you use to go about your daily life. Now imagine that you sold this car today, harvested all of the proceeds, and invested them into the following three companies: Uber, Alphabet, and Tesla. If you did this equally, your US$30k would end up as the following (based on today's share prices and if rounded down):
111 shares in Uber ($89.56/share)
49 shares in Alphabet ($201.42/share)
30 shares in Tesla ($329.68/share)
Then, instead of driving yourself around, you'd put the money that you would have normally spent on insurance, gas, and maintenance toward Ubers and Waymos (assuming Waymo is available in your city). Perhaps you even own a parking spot that could be rented out for an extra few hundred dollars each month. Whatever the specifics, let's just assume that what you used to spend to operate and service your car is now being spent on getting around using ride sharing services. It's a wash. So the only difference is that instead of having US$30k tied up in a depreciating asset, you're now part owner of the above three businesses.
This, once again, is not investment advice. I personally don't know how to make sense of Tesla's current valuation. There's a hell of a lot of optimism being priced in. I'm simply picking these three companies as a way to bet on Waymo's autonomous vehicle program (which is currently in the lead), Tesla's robotaxi promises (which, who knows, could actually materialize), and the fact that Uber might still remain the dominant marketplace for rides (though there's already evidence that Waymo is on track to overtake Uber in San Francisco within the next ~8 months).
It's not clear who will be the primary beneficiary of this shifting mobility landscape. Is Tesla right about
) still be needed to manage peak demand loads? Is the asset-heavy approach of owning AV fleets the wrong way to go about things for Waymo? I think it all remains to be seen. But I also think it's clear that autonomous vehicles have arrived and that urban mobility is changing right now, as we speak.
So I think there's a relatively high probability that everyone who owns a personal vehicle would be better off if they did what I am suggesting in this not-investment-advice-don't-do-what-I-write blog post. In other words, if we freed ourselves of the old ways and made some bets on the future. And that's ultimately the purpose of this post. It's so that you and I can come back to it on August 10th, 2030, and see how I did with my prediction. The reminder has been set.
) still be needed to manage peak demand loads? Is the asset-heavy approach of owning AV fleets the wrong way to go about things for Waymo? I think it all remains to be seen. But I also think it's clear that autonomous vehicles have arrived and that urban mobility is changing right now, as we speak.
So I think there's a relatively high probability that everyone who owns a personal vehicle would be better off if they did what I am suggesting in this not-investment-advice-don't-do-what-I-write blog post. In other words, if we freed ourselves of the old ways and made some bets on the future. And that's ultimately the purpose of this post. It's so that you and I can come back to it on August 10th, 2030, and see how I did with my prediction. The reminder has been set.
