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Analyzed from 5383 words in the discussion.
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#waymo#car#uber#don#more#where#ride#city#subscription#month
Discussion Sentiment
Analyzed from 5383 words in the discussion.
Trending Topics
Discussion (197 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
> Early Access: Be among the first to experience Waymo in new cities, as we expand.
> Waymo Premier costs $29.99 per month and will be initially offered to select riders in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix.
It sounds like when Waymo expands to a new city for the first time, the new potential customers would have a worse experience if there were a high enough volume of riders from other cities who participate in this program? I guess the assumption is that there won't be enough people subscribing who are traveling in other cities at a given time, but I'd also imagine that rolling out to a new city would start with smaller numbers of cars and scaling up, and it seems a bit odd to potentially set things up in a way that might result in people considering trying it but then seeing long wait times and deciding it's not worth it.
I had a Uber driver block my Waymo at an intersection in SF some months ago just to be an asshole. Apparently some other people have been attacked and robbed while in a Waymo.
Waymo should treat it like a security flaw that anyone can stop your car and there's nothing you can do about it.
I’ve enjoyed the ~70 or so Waymo rides I have taken but to me Waymo, Uber, and Lyft are methods of last resort.
My feet, BART, and SFMuni are my primary methods of transportation and for $104/mo I can take an unlimited number of trips, usually very conveniently.
Inside San Francisco, using public transit except for directly between BART stops is incredibly slow. For almost all journeys e-bikes dominate the speed discussion, and cars are second. The biggest constraint for us that made us take public transit is that our child was too young for a bike and we'd still only take it to Union Square.
I spent over a decade on a bicycle plus Muni/BART Fastpass and it's pretty good for the price if you're single and stay inside the city. As such a person I could crack open a book and a 15 min from Glen Park to Montgomery St. was the same as a 1 h from Montgomery to El Cerrito (the latter even preferable).
But the various policy choices popular in San Francisco (intentionally high labour usage, ill and violent people in public spaces, low cleaning capacity) do act against transit being a good choice. By comparison, I have family in Vancouver, BC where the politics are similar but the policy is different and the trains run very often and are fast (these are the most important things - made possible by removing labor from the equation) and are relatively clean. People will offer you a seat when you hop on with your stroller, elevators are functional and relatively clean, and it's overall a lot more usable as a family.
Not having to deal with parking and the fact that driving is actually very dangerous seem like stronger points in transits favor.
Fwiw, driving also has some negative je ne sais quoi for me that goes beyond the functional advantages. Maybe it's the aesthetic onslaught of ugly concrete, noise, heat and smell of sitting in traffic for an hour on the highway. Maybe there's something about getting around on your feet that makes me feel viscerally connected to the city. Maybe it's just the exercise that compounds over time. But I hate driving.
It's a class marker to be driven around in an autonomous 6000lbs tank rather than move your legs a bit.
People clearly chooses the convenience and predictability of cars, and pay significantly to do so
In places where there is greater convenience/predictability from pubilc transit, they choose it. See london/ny
They have a light rail, but it only goes between downtown and a few suburbs. Your other option is several bus transfers.
If you’re thinking of cities like New York or London, public transport is more practical in many cases.
- In SF you can either walk 1-10 minutes to the bus, wait 0-15 minutes for the bus, tap on (while watching most other passengers evade the fare), get dropped off, and then walk 1-10 minutes to your destination… or spend an additional $5-10 to get Ubered door to door at a third of the time. First and last mile are real costs.
- In SF I Uber, unless Muni/BART is a straight shot. In NYC I take the subway. It’s not really a class thing. In NYC it takes longer to Uber much of the time and it costs several more times than the subway. You still have a 1-5 minute first and last mile problem, but headways on trains is decent and above ground taxis are incredibly inconsistent with traffic.
That about matches up with the experience with social groups in similar classes in these areas too. Most of my SF friends Uber. Most of my NYC friends take the subway.
The first two are what I experienced today on a bus in SF, and the guy smoking meth was about 6 days ago
> autonomous 6000lbs tank
Hmmm. The meta here made me chuckle. Calling cars tanks is certainly a class marker.
The future of self-driving taxis is women (customers) who want to live in a big city, but don't want to ride mass transit, nor ride in a ride-hailing services (Uber, etc.) with a human driver... because most drivers are men.
Most of my Waymo rides were from or to a BART station - the real utility of these services is to pull a last mile when I don't have a car.
There's no better way of getting out of Powell out of the traffic deadlock at 5 PM than BART.
But once you get south of Daly City, there's no timed connections for the surface streets.
If you need to go to Brisbane from Powell, the 2 mile car ride is worth the effect.
Or imagine that you work a professional travel job and you're flying to/from the airport on a weekly basis. Your employer will pay for your ride to the airport, so why would you take public transit? Now you're doing at least 3-4 taxi/uber/waymo rides a week.
$30/month is way cheaper than $104/month.
How would you compare the base metrics?
Time to start traveling, average walk amount per trip, total trip duration, coverage parity, etc.
I suspect you can get into a waymo quicker and with less walking than a subway, unless you live very close. I imagine total trip time is pretty variable. Coverage parity is hard to guess about - in theory a waymo can go anywhere but I suspect public transport has longer "tendrils."
If I include the walks of 30+ minutes and bus rides, it’s probably pushing $2k/mo in rideshare costs.
(does that satisfy you sir?)
If 15 rides a month averaging $30 a ride can remove your need to own a car, that's $450. In that range the subscription would pay for itself.
Compare that to a car payment, insurance, maintenance, and gas. Pretty favorable!
Not long ago I walked from downtown SF up to the Golden Gate and walked across and back. My feet were tired and I didn't want to walk back downtown. It took me long enough to figure out where buses pick up that I missed one; at that point my decision was something like "70 minutes to wait for bus, take bus, transfer or walk to my hotel" or "23 minutes + $20 to get a Waymo" and I consider that a great value for my money.
I am a huge fan of public transit and try to avoid driving whenever I can. When the public transit goes approximately from where you are to where you want to be, or when it comes frequently enough that transfers don't cost you half an hour if you miss a connection, it's great, but there are so many edge cases.
I've never needed to call a taxi/Waymo in London, and in NYC the only time I did was getting from the airport to Manhattan the first time I went (every other time I know how to take AirTrain to public transit). In nearly every other city I've taken a Lyft/Waymo/Taxi at least once because the system isn't good enough to be universal.
Same model as airlines.
400/mo or 5000/yr for not having to worry about all that plus never playing the "wait let's circle the block, maybe a spot has opened up" game... sounds tempting.
Lease or loan: $350
Parking in city: $300
Car insurance: $180
Gas: $120
License/Registration: $42 (~$500 per year)
Maintenance: $17 (~$200 per year)
If you live in the city and you can afford not driving, please put that extra $1000/month into your brokerage or HYSA
Assuming normal costs, you are looking $21-$22k not including taxes.
There is no way you are finding a car for $28k for just $400. Trust me.
i have a sports car and two motorcycles, and consequently, i did not buy a condo in the mission. instead, i bought a house by 19th street bart and my commute to the city is shorter than some of my coworkers who live half as far as me (by distance).
There construction happening a block down the road from me. As part of the work, the rightmost lane is often blocked during the day (in between rush hours), so that things like concrete pumping can take place. The lane block starts just before where I live.
Around the same time, I noticed that when I would try to take Waymo (which I used to get to PT), I'd be told that things are busy and rides are paused. Recently, I've noticed that if I'm at work (or the PT place) and I want to take a Waymo back home, I'm told "Can't get to that spot right now".
If I had Waymo Premier, I wonder how hard it would be to get a refund on my subscription.
The above talks about a complete block (or, a complete-enough block) to using the service, but what about a major impediment? For example, let's say I travel regularly, and use Waymo to get to/from San Jose airport. Waymo's been disabling highway routes, which for me equates to 20-minute (or more) travel-time increase from home to airport. Would that be enough to qualify for a refund on the subscription?
And although 20 minutes doesn’t seem much, the variability of airline baggage check and TSA means 20 minutes doesn’t seem an lead to increased stress.
Seems like a niche case
I wrote about this before but I've been using Empower app recently as an Uber competitor, it acts as a subscription for drivers where they pay 50 bucks a month to get on the platform and then keep any and all fees from riders, so it keeps the prices very low for riders while drivers make more money. Essentially Empower cuts out their middleman profit margin to act more like Costco making money on subscriptions alone rather than the price of goods.
Just wait till Google spins it off to private equity; it'll be barley running bits of vehicles patched together by the cheapest mechanics they can find.
Enjoy it while you can; I'd love to give it a go myself, but even though I live in a city where they are supposedly in commercial operation, I can't get one to either of the two houses on either side of town that I currently split my time between. I have a buddy who lives a few blocks from one of their zones who walked over just so he could try it out. As of now, our sub-standard, minimally-invested-in-this-century bus system is actually much better suited to my needs.
> A straw man argument is a common logical fallacy where someone distorts or exaggerates an opposing position to make it easier to attack. Instead of addressing the actual point, they refute a weaker, fabricated version of the argument (the "straw man") to create the illusion of having won the debate.
There's nothing AFAICT that says Google is considering any such thing.
That may be causing other cities some caution.
they apparently like driving into floodwaters [1]
one vehicle got confused by construction barriers, entered opposing traffic, and halted [2]
in Dallas, a gas leak caused an explosion that leveled an apartment building, a Waymo unit blocked the scene, and first responders had to first reach into the car and try grasping the wheel, before the remote support agent agreed to kill the car and put it in neutral so they could push it out of their way [3]
I have a moderate fear for the safety of my children with these things on the road
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgplyxxl75o
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/1tzszpx/waymo_stuck...
[3] https://www.keranews.org/news/2026-06-04/oak-cliff-apartment...
I have some terrible news for you about the human drivers already on the road
> Waymo Premier is a new invite-only membership program built for those who rely on us most. For a monthly fee, members gain access to a suite of exclusive benefits designed to make their journey more seamless and rewarding:
Priority Pickups: Skip the line with prioritized matching
Ride Savings: Earn 10% Waymo Cash back on every trip, and even more during busy times.
Early Access: Be among the first to experience Waymo in new cities, as we expand.
Flexible Cancellations: Peace of mind with up to five free cancellations per month.
---
ok so just amazon prime for waymo. its alright but i feel like they had the chance to go REALLY high end with like a $300/month plan that people will still pay for because supply is so limited. instead they went mass consumer with a name like "Premier". eh.
(sorry waymo person reading this i know what its like to name a thing and regret it)
How is this useful in any way? by definition it's a subscription for people already using the service in the (few) supported cities. If I use it in Denver, why would I care to have early access in Washington?
That's usually things like caltrain / muni. But I would definitely sponsor a $300/mo waymo subscription if it was like 20 rides a month.
https://oaklandside.org/2024/07/25/gig-will-shut-down-its-ca...
https://vay.io/
I hate the state of the car-dependent American urban fabric and would love to see public transport everywhere (trains > AVs). But Waymo/AVs can meet people where they are (personal vehicles) and deliver a halfway decent solution (distributed, on demand, cheap transport without human labor).
Speaking personally, I don't see enough movies or do enough ride shares to want to subscribe to AMC or Waymo, but Doordash would make sense. Maybe it's OK for me to pay a higher price for the ~1 time per year I use those other services.
My conclusion is that Doordash actually cares more about their non-subscribed users than their subscribers: that's where they see growth.
If you don’t like it, then change providers.
If all providers do it, then you must pay to avoid advertisements.
Or, complain to your elected government representatives.
What’s that? Your Chase/Amex credit card gives you a monthly/annual credit? Ok. No more complaints then.
For most things though totally agreed
It is the fact that you can't do anything without them being pushed down your throat that is infuriating. Every interaction with a company these days is an attempt to up-sell. When a small number of retail stores started that, I stopped doing business with them. Now they all do it.
It's less convenient, doesn't work nationally and isn't as fun?
> I'm not obligated to talk to someone that I don't want to talk to
I’m wondering what we lose as a society if people never have to be in even a mildly uncomfortable situation. There’s a book called The Comfort Crisis about this topic.
EDIT: The full quote is “I get privacy, time back, a safe ride, and I'm not obligated to talk to someone that I don't want to talk to.”
In her quote she chose to separate safety and having a conversation with a stranger as two separate issues.
Can't even imagine what women go through.
I couldn't care less what people in the Philippines - one of the most gay-friendly countries in Asia - think of me through a camera stream.
Literally don't care. What I don't need is to be evangelised with whatever conspiracy theory or fringe religion my driver just joined the entire way back from JFK.
I'd feel like I'm losing something by giving up that human interaction, such that it is.
More typical of Christians so it kind of threw me off.
But anyway, a paid service shouldn't be starting that kind of conversation unless for some reason I started it and even then that'd make it just as uncomfortable for the driver.
"Uber received over 400,000 sexual assault and misconduct reports between 2017 and 2022"
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/06/uber-liable-pay-8-5-million-...
I once had a driver pick me up in downtown Seattle, and it turned out to be that he was driving for Uber as a tactic for his entrepreneurial venture developing antimicrobial and hydrophobic coating. He claimed to have applied it to the fishing boat from Deadliest Catch. He was specifically circling downtown to try to pick up someone who could get the ear of someone in Amazon's grocery division that he could pitch to (which I was not). At a red light in a nightmarish seven-way intersection, he took out a square of cheesecloth that had apparently had the coating applied, and attempted to demonstrate its effectiveness by pouring water onto it. It worked, and the water got all over his passenger seat and center console instead while the light turned green and cars behind us honked.
A few months later, Uber tried to match me with that same driver, and I cancelled it and walked instead. I have to imagine that if a guy with that level of high-preparation social ineptitude can stick around in their system, that the number of people making offhand inappropriate moves or remarks must be reasonably high.
It can be annoying to have to deal with irrational humans who make mistakes, but that really is just part of life! I'll take some cumbersome conversations over conducting my entire life via corporate app interfaces.
My wife will not ride alone in Uber's because she's had one too many uncomfortable -> possibly dangerous situations.
This appears to be true for all of her friends as well.
It sounds like your wife is overly sensitive and I honestly don't believe you know the attitudes of all of your wife's friends with regards to Uber. This is classic "make up some rubbish to prove my point online."
They need a technical solution for issues that a 10 year old can figure out.
I recognize that this is a luxury product but I kind of laughed out loud at this testimonial. The amount of privilege you need to have to grow up and live in *Arizona* without ever learning how to drive is insane.
What’s up with the fake review?
> I get privacy, time back, …
Yea you get "privacy" in a car kitted with the most advanced 360 degree camera system in the interior and exterior of the vehicle. Waymo PR team unhinged
> “I never got my driver's license, and I rely on Waymo to commute to an office every day," said Sarah Paige Roland, a Waymo rider in Phoenix. "I get privacy, time back, a safe ride, and I'm not obligated to talk to someone that I don't want to talk to. Adding cash back and priority pickups on top of that makes Premier a no-brainer for someone like me."
I get what they're trying to say, but their pitch boils down to: "use waymo if youre too stupid to get a DL and too antisocial to talk to people". Bit rough. They really could have done a lot better with this PR piece lol.
-or- use Waymo if you don’t want to spend resources on owning and maintaining a car, and if you are part of the population that has or may feel too intimidated or unsafe to navigate a potentially adversarial conversation with someone more powerful than you, such as women.