A central prerequisite of the roboting is that the high cost of use and the lowest labor costs will eventually make it a cheap transport option. This is not yet true, but now there are some facts that give us an idea of how much.
Obi, an application that brings together real -time prices and picking times in multiple route services as soon as he published what calls “First in -depth examination of Waymo’s strategic pricing.“The company found that Waymo’s self-driving self-ride is steadily more expensive than comparative offers from Uber and Lyft-and it doesn’t seem to matter.
The exhibition, which is shared exclusively with TechCrunch, is based on a one -month data collected between March 25 and April 25 in San Francisco, California. Obi pulled almost 90,000 “offers a record” from Waymo, Lyft’s “typical” offer and Uberx to compare the price and ETA. He then compared the driving requests from the same moments and routes. Obi found that Lyft offered the lowest average price at $ 14.44. Uber was then at $ 15.58. The average price of Waymo throughout the data of the month was $ 20.43.
Ashwini Anburajan, head of OBI’s revenue, told Techcrunch that this was a bit weird, given the early popularity of Waymo’s service. Waymo said in May that he was providing 250,000 paid trips a week to the top four cities. The highest pricing obviously has not weakened this enthusiasm.
“Overall, there is an idea that autonomous vehicles are something that will erode drivers’ jobs and endanger drivers and I think the irony of what we have seen is that it is really expensive to run an AV and that this is not going to happen, at least in the near future,” he said.
At peak hours, Obi found the average price of Waymo to be about $ 11 more expensive than a lyft and nearly $ 9.50 more expensive than a Uber.
“I didn’t expect consumers willing to pay up to $ 10 more,” Anburajan said. “Think [that] He talks about a real sense of excitement about technology, innovation and a real preference to be sometimes in the car without a driver. ”
Obi found that not only was it more expensive, but there was more variability in his invoice than with Uber or Lyft.
Anburajan said an explanation is that Waymo’s pricing model is not so sophisticated. Uber and Lyft, she said, had over a decade to improve the way rides. These platforms are also a little more dynamic, with drivers dating in and out of their own time, or uniting or completely abandoning the concert work.
Waymo, meanwhile, has a mostly stable but slowly increasing supply of vehicles (although the rate of this growth can soon be accelerated). This has led to what Anburajan said is more of a “net supply and demand” pricing system.
This has two great impact on customers. One is that short trips tend to cost more than larger. Obi found that Waymo rides cost about $ 26 per kilometer if the route remains below 1.4 km.
This is also true for Uber and Lyft rides. But Obi found that the shorter Waymo walks were 41.48% and 31.12% higher than Uber and Lyft, respectively. This gap was shrinking as the walks took more. On walks between 4.3 km and 9.3 km, Lyft costs $ 2.60 per km, an Uber costs $ 2.90 per km and a waymo costs $ 3.50 per km.
The other impact is that longer waiting times equals more expensive trips. After all, sending a car too far to get a customer means that it will perform fewer high -distance margins.
This still does not discourage Waymo customers, Anburajan said, even though Obi found Waymo to have more volatility in waiting times.
In addition to the deep dive based on the data, OBI also watched the riders in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Arizona Phoenix to better understand what could lead these trends.
The company found that 70% of users who had taken a Waymo ride said they preferred a driver without a traditional rideshare or taxi.
Despite this enthusiasm, OBI found that security was still a great concern for riders. Of the respondents, 74% said security was their biggest concern about robbery. Almost 70% of respondents said they believe that there should be some form of remote human ride monitoring (which is already a common practice).
Perhaps even more striking is how people answered a question about whether they would be willing to pay more for a waymo. Almost 40% said they would pay “the same or less”. But 16.3% said they would pay less than $ 5 more per ride. Another 10.1% said they would pay up to $ 5 more per ride. And 16.3% said they would pay up to $ 10 more per ride.
Anburajan said the answers like these help further explain the most expensive Waymo walks.
“There’s something to be in the car just” that wins customers, he said. “It’s there to live in a small bubble and get from point A to point B, and be very comfortable to do it.”
