I've determined that my ultimate dream car would be something like a Rivian but with Waymo tech, so I can drive it manually when I want/need (snowstorms, off-road), but I can also let it drive me across the country at night while I camp in the back. Would absolutely change the way we move across the US, especially if you have hobbies that involve a lot of gear and equipment.
I want this as well. Hopefully my Cybertruck will get unsupervised driving someday, but until then, it's the closest thing to the dream of electric off-roading, self-driving vehicle with huge cargo capacity. I've already stopped driving myself around 98% of the time, according to my FSD stats.
Yea. With a huge 100 kWh battery and a removable range extender for those extra-long trips :)
Plus that battery (and range extender) can also provide power and heating when parked.
I wonder if at some point we'll see a hockey stick adoption of self-driving cars. For now every new city is worth a blog post, eventually they'll allow intercity drives. Will international adoption take off? Will I be able to use it on a country road to visit my family in 10 years?
Stiff competition for humans, especially drivers outside the top quartile or so. Waymo appears to its passengers to drive much more competently than certainly any sub-average rideshare driver.
Although I like jobs for humans, I hope these aren’t all just set on fire because there is promise in reducing fatalities. Want to find a way for offline vehicles that can go 65MPH to remain legal though. Without Flock every block either unless we (in USA) forget what the whole USA thing’s about.
Edit: @Waymo would LOVE to see an industry-leading privacy pledge so good the EFF slaps their logo on it (even caveated), also your engineers are amazing
A Waymo was recently stuck on some light rail tracks in Phoenix this year [1]. Portland has a rather diverse bunch of streetcars and trams concentrated in its downtown core. Hopefully they don't get stuck on the tracks or block the trams.
Oh man... this will be so awesome as a pedestrian/cyclist. When I see a Waymo coming, I can actually have some reasonable expectation that it will stop for me!
The same Waymo that says that they don't give a shit that they're stopping in bike lanes because their selfish passengers pay for it? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47912645
I wonder how long Google will continue to subsidize this at a substantial loss? Estimated $30–40 billion spent in the last decade that only really pays off if they dominate the market.
I don't think Waymo needs to dominate the market to succeed. They just need to scale up (time)x(number of vehicles) enough to amortize the R&D costs of the self driving capability. Paying a driver is a big chunk of a taxi/Uber's costs, so eliminating that leaves a lot of room to maneuver.
So one year of revenue buys ~2500 cars at those prices, which is roughly the size of their fleet (~3000 according to Wikipedia). It seems plausible that newer cars will be cheaper as designs get optimized, economies of scale hit and what used to be really expensive cutting-edge hardware becomes commoditized and goes down in cost over time.
They certainly also need support including contractors that assist cars that get need human input, maintenance etc. and the electricity for the cars isn't free either, but just based on these numbers, it sounds like they are likely close to being profitable if you ignore R&D.
If you assume $10 a ride, and a car giving 3 rides an hour for 12 hours a day, that's $360 in revenue per car per day, close to the $320 you'd get from $350M/3000/365. That means each car pays for itself in about a year (ignoring all other costs, of course).
Based on this and the assumption that cars last for more than 2 years, I'd guess that Waymo is only "unprofitable" (not sure how this works in accounting terms) due to ongoing R&D and expansions and there really isn't much more to "subsidize".
I bet they've hit operating breakeven a couple years ago. If they hadn't they wouldn't have been expanding. Expanding while you have an operating loss means the loss would be expanding alongside the service. I'm not seeing that in the numbers.
> Portland has always been a pioneer in urban design, balancing its independent spirit with a deep commitment to sustainable, forward-thinking living.
People should research the racist history of American cities before publishing broad, vapid, and likely LLM-generated statements like this.
If you're going to say a place has "always been a pioneer in urban design", you should take the time to acknowledge that Portland's early urban-design efforts were deeply racist and explicitly segregated.
For context, this is coming in as TriMet is laying off staff, reducing service frequency, eliminating bus lines, and cutting parts of light rail routes due to a $300M budget shortfall. The cuts were exacerbated by state Republicans getting a proposed payroll tax repeal onto the ballot next month; TriMet relies heavily on payroll taxes that are deeply unpopular among the self-employed and small business owners, so the budget is going to get worse before it gets better.
So at the same time that public transit is retreating and rideshare company labor overhead is threatening to increase, Waymo shows up with a convenient solution to both problems.
I haven't been to Portland for years, but I remember it as being a transit-forward city, with several streetcar lines (one connected to an aerial tram), and decent light rail service covering much of the metro area.
It sounds like they're going to leave that behind, at least for the foreseeable future. A $300 million cut will probably lead to a death spiral in ridership.
i remember trying to use public transport to move around portland from my hotel in the convention center area to the downtown and after sundown it was practically impossible
I would not blame this on republicans; they don't hold a majority in the state senate, house, both senators and most house reps are democrats, and there isn't anywhere they hold meaningful power. Further they're opposed to doubling payroll taxes, the taxes are not raised yet.
Oregon, and Portland in particular, suffered a lot economically after covid due to overprotective laws banning operations. A lot of companies went out of business, people moved, and tax revenue plummeted. Growth since has been slow due to hostile laws. TriMet cuts are due to poor city and state management, which frankly doubling payroll tax would exacerbate.
I wonder how large the footprint will be. I live in the greater Portland area, but not in the city proper. There are definitely situations where Waymo would be great, but my guess is that they won't start off serving my specific area.
I'm a little sad to see this because I'm moving northward to Seattle next month, I've lived in Portland proper for over 16 years, and Seattle doesn't have Waymo yet. Great timing lol.
Portland will probably be a great testing ground for them because generally speaking you have a lot of tech curious and tech averse people here living together. When we got electric scooters there were both tons of people using them and a lot of people throwing them in the Willamette. Pretty big artistic community that doesn't look kindly on AI right now. This has no real bearing on Waymo's success, but I'll be interested to see how they navigate the PR part of it.
Seems like a hostile market for Waymo. Many Portlanders despise tech giants and are strongly anti-car & anti-AI, far more than SF. Not to mention Portland's political / governance / people problems already inclines the population to anger.
Are they sure? Portland is a special kind of crazy. I can say this cuz I’m a native now living in Berlin. locals are going to trash the cars and do all sorts of damage.
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[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 67.0 ms ] threadYou can drive, on the highway, from San Francisco to San Jose, two cities that are about 50 miles apart.
I suppose you mean something more "road trip-y"? Interstate, not intercity?
Although I like jobs for humans, I hope these aren’t all just set on fire because there is promise in reducing fatalities. Want to find a way for offline vehicles that can go 65MPH to remain legal though. Without Flock every block either unless we (in USA) forget what the whole USA thing’s about.
Edit: @Waymo would LOVE to see an industry-leading privacy pledge so good the EFF slaps their logo on it (even caveated), also your engineers are amazing
[1] https://www.azfamily.com/2026/01/08/waymo-passenger-flees-af...
What will they tell the unemployed drivers? "Coal miners need to code" doesn't work any more. Become a data thief/labeler perhaps?
Good luck to Portland getting fucked by Waymo.
So one year of revenue buys ~2500 cars at those prices, which is roughly the size of their fleet (~3000 according to Wikipedia). It seems plausible that newer cars will be cheaper as designs get optimized, economies of scale hit and what used to be really expensive cutting-edge hardware becomes commoditized and goes down in cost over time.
They certainly also need support including contractors that assist cars that get need human input, maintenance etc. and the electricity for the cars isn't free either, but just based on these numbers, it sounds like they are likely close to being profitable if you ignore R&D.
If you assume $10 a ride, and a car giving 3 rides an hour for 12 hours a day, that's $360 in revenue per car per day, close to the $320 you'd get from $350M/3000/365. That means each car pays for itself in about a year (ignoring all other costs, of course).
Based on this and the assumption that cars last for more than 2 years, I'd guess that Waymo is only "unprofitable" (not sure how this works in accounting terms) due to ongoing R&D and expansions and there really isn't much more to "subsidize".
People should research the racist history of American cities before publishing broad, vapid, and likely LLM-generated statements like this.
If you're going to say a place has "always been a pioneer in urban design", you should take the time to acknowledge that Portland's early urban-design efforts were deeply racist and explicitly segregated.
https://www.portland.gov/bps/planning/adap/history-racist-pl...
https://habitatportlandregion.org/the-early-history-of-portl...
You can drive a lot of busses for 22 million a year.
I use the train a lot in Portland and I would not endorse something so expensive.
I will feel so secure and private being recorded at all angles in a car I don't own and can't sue.
"Waymo: ‘no plans’ to use in-car camera data for targeted ads"
(https://www.theverge.com/news/644770/waymo-interior-camera-a...)
https://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/2026/04/trimet-official...
https://www.portlandmercury.com/news/trimets-present-crisis-...
At the same time, Portland's city council is debating whether to cap the cut of driver pay that rideshare companies take: https://www.opb.org/article/2026/04/13/uber-lyft-driver-pay-...
So at the same time that public transit is retreating and rideshare company labor overhead is threatening to increase, Waymo shows up with a convenient solution to both problems.
That's absurd. Waymo exacerbates the problem. It doesn't provide public transport.
You get unlimited travel for $100/month on Trimet. You think Waymo is going to cost anything close to that?
It sounds like they're going to leave that behind, at least for the foreseeable future. A $300 million cut will probably lead to a death spiral in ridership.
Oregon, and Portland in particular, suffered a lot economically after covid due to overprotective laws banning operations. A lot of companies went out of business, people moved, and tax revenue plummeted. Growth since has been slow due to hostile laws. TriMet cuts are due to poor city and state management, which frankly doubling payroll tax would exacerbate.
Portland will probably be a great testing ground for them because generally speaking you have a lot of tech curious and tech averse people here living together. When we got electric scooters there were both tons of people using them and a lot of people throwing them in the Willamette. Pretty big artistic community that doesn't look kindly on AI right now. This has no real bearing on Waymo's success, but I'll be interested to see how they navigate the PR part of it.