As someone who works in commercial real estate, involved in about $300M of housing development, some of it affordable, i will say without any doubt that driverless cars are a very effective affordable housing policy that is not being considered or discussed by anyone.
Any public dollar that gets contributed to housing, basically adds a 50% cost factor and assume whatever it is used for will take 2-3x as long to deliver anything you can live in.
So instead, Cities should lease Waymos (or other brands), and provide these vehicles for use by affordable tenants in properties with limited parking.
Building housing with no parking is not feasible for 95% of deals. You simply won't get financing or you'll end up handing the keys back to the lender and bankrupt on the deal. Instead, if you could hand to your investors and lender an agreement which provides a car for every 3 units, that tenants have first priority to use for free (or an amount subsidized per month) up to reasonable limits, then you'd address the concern "where are people going to park and how to get to work?".
it's way more efficient than building $100 billion in transit that will take 200 years to build.
What's it cost per year to lease? $30k? That car can be full time serving 4-10 units daily? The cars can be rented to the public on off hours to offset their operating cost.
It's a lot more cost efficient and can be done TODAY, not 5 years after complicated LIHTC financing with 4 layers of other public funding, 3 years of approvals, and 2 years of construction.
eagleinparadise
Surprisingly low hype for a company running perhaps the most advanced consumer-interactive robots. I’m quite fond of these machines and will periodically rescue them when someone has misused them (door not closed, most commonly). Hope they do well. Very good road participants.
arjie
I live very close to LAX, and we have hundreds of Waymos in our area. At first i was a little weary, and kinda weirded out by all of them.
They have become completely normal, and cause WAY fewer traffic incidents than human drivers. They are very predictable, and will always let you pull in front of them when changing lanes (unlike a lot of other LA drivers).
I have seen a few incidents where they seem 'stuck', and it was a bit annoying and kind of funny, but again, it does not happen nearly as often as for human drivers.
I also like taking them. It is nice to just get in and relax and not have to talk to anyone or worry about who is going to pick you up. You can control the temperature and music from your phone, you can drop the pin exactly where you want to be dropped off and picked up, and the ride is smooth and comfortable.
We can debate all the knock on effects of Waymos, but the user experience is pretty great.
cortesoft
I'm happy that Waymo's finally lighting up Dallas, but they need to expand its service area quickly for it to be useful there, IMO.
Austin, Houston and San Antonio are hub and spoke cities. They are designed with their downtowns as loci for their metros with suburbs sprawling around them concentricly. Waymo gets you to a lot of places within these cities for that reason.
Dallas is built around and between Dallas and Fort Worth, kind of like LA, but more sparse. Fort Worth is still very attached to their downtown (Sundance Square and University); Dallas is very much not. When I think of Dallas, I think of Addison, Plano, Grapevine/Irving/Las Colinas, Carrollton, Richardson, and the HEB (Hurst/Euless/Bedford) none of whom are represented in this service area.
This will be useful for hanging out in Bishop Arts and Deep Ellum, and the rich SMU grads up in old money Dallas, but I hope they're doing this to train up on highway driving.
(My critique of Waymo's service area also applies to DART, their public transit network. They have trains built around downtown in a way that's meaningless for most folks that want to use it for daily commutes. With most of their non-downtown bus routes running on hourly schedules, it's no surprise that DART posts anemic ridership numbers every year.)
nunez
I was talking with someone visiting from Florida the other day and they were talking about how Waymo is slurping money that would have otherwise stayed in the local economy. E.g. you pay an uber driver, the uber driver pays the grocery store, etc.
This is something that had never occurred to me since I love taking Waymos here in the bay area. I guess Waymos operating in Florida need local labor to maintain and clean the cars? How are others thinking about this?
DFW is amongst the top 5 metroplexes in the US and is extremely low density, high sprawl with few public transit options and a car heavy culture. This is a a welcome change.
pm90
Here in Austin, I'm stuck calling an uber and hoping I get a Waymo. When does that deal expire?
quxbar
Elon may have been technically correct about 'if humans can do it with vision only then theres no reason why vision-only cannot work' but turned out to be the wrong strategy for learning how to get there. lidar gives you a constant stream of data to check your vision yourself against and interatively learn. Once trained you turn it off. whereas teslas strategy ended up having to rely on human drivers for error feedback which made the learning loop way longer.
comments (10)
Any public dollar that gets contributed to housing, basically adds a 50% cost factor and assume whatever it is used for will take 2-3x as long to deliver anything you can live in.
So instead, Cities should lease Waymos (or other brands), and provide these vehicles for use by affordable tenants in properties with limited parking.
Building housing with no parking is not feasible for 95% of deals. You simply won't get financing or you'll end up handing the keys back to the lender and bankrupt on the deal. Instead, if you could hand to your investors and lender an agreement which provides a car for every 3 units, that tenants have first priority to use for free (or an amount subsidized per month) up to reasonable limits, then you'd address the concern "where are people going to park and how to get to work?".
it's way more efficient than building $100 billion in transit that will take 200 years to build.
What's it cost per year to lease? $30k? That car can be full time serving 4-10 units daily? The cars can be rented to the public on off hours to offset their operating cost.
It's a lot more cost efficient and can be done TODAY, not 5 years after complicated LIHTC financing with 4 layers of other public funding, 3 years of approvals, and 2 years of construction.
eagleinparadise
arjie
They have become completely normal, and cause WAY fewer traffic incidents than human drivers. They are very predictable, and will always let you pull in front of them when changing lanes (unlike a lot of other LA drivers).
I have seen a few incidents where they seem 'stuck', and it was a bit annoying and kind of funny, but again, it does not happen nearly as often as for human drivers.
I also like taking them. It is nice to just get in and relax and not have to talk to anyone or worry about who is going to pick you up. You can control the temperature and music from your phone, you can drop the pin exactly where you want to be dropped off and picked up, and the ride is smooth and comfortable.
We can debate all the knock on effects of Waymos, but the user experience is pretty great.
cortesoft
Austin, Houston and San Antonio are hub and spoke cities. They are designed with their downtowns as loci for their metros with suburbs sprawling around them concentricly. Waymo gets you to a lot of places within these cities for that reason.
Dallas is built around and between Dallas and Fort Worth, kind of like LA, but more sparse. Fort Worth is still very attached to their downtown (Sundance Square and University); Dallas is very much not. When I think of Dallas, I think of Addison, Plano, Grapevine/Irving/Las Colinas, Carrollton, Richardson, and the HEB (Hurst/Euless/Bedford) none of whom are represented in this service area.
This will be useful for hanging out in Bishop Arts and Deep Ellum, and the rich SMU grads up in old money Dallas, but I hope they're doing this to train up on highway driving.
(My critique of Waymo's service area also applies to DART, their public transit network. They have trains built around downtown in a way that's meaningless for most folks that want to use it for daily commutes. With most of their non-downtown bus routes running on hourly schedules, it's no surprise that DART posts anemic ridership numbers every year.)
nunez
This is something that had never occurred to me since I love taking Waymos here in the bay area. I guess Waymos operating in Florida need local labor to maintain and clean the cars? How are others thinking about this?
ultimoo
daemonologist
pm90
quxbar
pyaamb
hmokiguess