I think a bigger challenge for Waymo is going to be getting trust and regulatory favor. Everyone keeps clinging on to the "oh, comparing prices, waymo is cheaper than uber because there's no driver!" narrative, but from what I've seen from the few reports so far, the prices aren't all that different from other services.
I can also imagine quite a few other not-so-flattering narratives being relatively realistic:
- "I'll never trust some faceless AI w/ my kids in the car! I'd rather pay a bit more and get a real person behind the wheel. Support the local economy, you know?"
- "Oh, so you want a license to put an entire class of workers out of jobs under MY government term?"
- "I got a trashed waymo car and customer support ignored me when I asked for a refund!"
- "I took a waymo after partying a bit too hard and now I'm locked out of all my google accounts with no recourse!"
- etc
I think people on HN often give way too much weight to the "cool tech" aspect of waymo, and disregard the very real and very significant meat bag aspect.
