Context:
Waymo is deployed in San Francisco and Phoenix, accepting customers 24/7 throughout the city.
Waymo is finishing up its 5-month tour of testing in LA in early March 2024. In the 9 months after that, before the end of the year, will you be able to book a ride?
Criteria:
Allow anyone downloading the app to book a ride in LA without a waitlist or invite codes by December 31st, 2024.
An announcement doesn't count, you have to be able to book a ride.
There has to be significant deployment of cars and service areas covering large parts of LA, so one could reasonably expect to get a ride i.e. an LA equivalent of Zoox's testing within Foster City wouldn't count as a full deployment, you should be able to go a reasonable distance such as between most or all of it's testing areas; Santa Monica; Century City; WeHo; Mid City; K-Town and DTLA.
@BenLoveitt The current operating area is a pretty small fraction of the LA city limits. (Less than half the population I think.) Are you going to resolve this as “yes” if rides are bookable without a waitlist even if it remain as geographically limited as it is now? Or does it have too look more like the area in the James Hoffman tweet?
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fgb3do15kxw0d1.jpeg
It will take several years of exponential growth to scale the fleet to satisfy demand in a region with 10M+ people, so this is mostly a bet on whether Waymo ends up allowing prices to rise significantly higher than Uber/Lyft versus the current strategy of (roughly) pegging to a 10% premium over Uber/Lyft and curbing demand with a waitlist.
They're taking payment in LA now and anecdotally they're letting people off the waitlist
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/14/1238489046/waymo-robotaxi-los-angeles
Slightly late to update this but Waymo is but the cars are now roaming around all of LA. It's still an invite only list and free for now but will be changing to paid service soon
Why is the probability here so different from this other market? https://manifold.markets/BenLoveitt/will-waymo-be-fully-deployed-in-la