This Chinese Company Did 1.1 Million Paid Robotaxi Rides Last Quarter
Lyft CEO releases their AV master plan, Waymo avoids hitting a longboarder in LA, and Tesla again has the highest accident rate of any auto brand
Top Stories of the Week
I don’t know much about Baidu and their ridehail service Apollo Go, but apparently the company did 1.1 million paid robotaxi rides last quarter, and is expanding to Hong Kong soon. If everything here is true, that is impressive and puts them squarely in Waymo territory.
I might have to take a trip to China and witness this first hand for myself though as I’m not sure Apollo Go will be able to come to the US any time soon. And if the technology is as good as they say it is, there are likely a lot of interested parties who would license this technology asap.
Related - Apollo Go: When Robotaxis Become Part of Everyday Life (link).
Lyft’s Autonomous Vehicle Vision and Strategy (link). This is a nice follow-up to Dara’s interview from last week and I like the framework that Lyft’s CEO David Risher lays out here. It seems like Lyft intends to toe the asset-light path of partnership toward the AV revolution, just like Uber. But the key difference is that they intend to manage the fleet in-house through a subsidiary (Flexdrive), rather than through a third party like Uber is doing with Moove and others.
I do think Lyft has more experience managing and owning vehicles than Uber (Xchange leasing didn’t go too well) and I don’t see any reason why Waymo, Zoox or others wouldn’t put their vehicles on both Uber and Lyft. As both CEOs have hammered home, it’s all about maximizing utilization for AVs since they have such high capex.
Teaser alert: I’ll have a Lyft executive on my panel at the Ride AI conference in LA on 4/2 (use my link to get discounted tickets here).
Cool Rides
🚗 First Ride in an Autonomous Car! (link).
Open source software is so cool. This is my Rivian R1S being autonomously driven by the Comma 3X (link). True robotaxis like Waymo and Zoox are what everyone cares about right now, but Comma is another company that I’m eager to learn more about. Retro-fitting existing cars with an AV stack (and tele-operations too) open up a lot of interesting use cases. Imagine driving your own car around, and then once you get to your destination, it goes and parks for you. That adds a ton of value and could easily save you $20-50 if you’re parking somewhere busy.
That Waymo no driver thing is hard to get used to but very very cool (link).
First time riding in Waymo and I have to say...WOW! (link).
AVs and Humans behaving badly
Hey Waymo, someone left this dog in the car with no collar! (link). Well that’s a first for me.
Waymo vs Steam - Round 2 (link). Catch the first round here in case you missed it.
Waymo Self Driving Car cannot handle Power Outage at Traffic Signal (link).
Other Stuff
Just posted our first Driverless Digest video on YouTube, check it out (link). And here’s the full live video I did from last week (link).
Watch Waymo avoid hill-bombing longboarder near Santa Monica (link). Like I’ve said before, Waymo should be posting clips like this way more often and then market the hell out of them to local/mainstream media. Most non-tech people that ask me about Waymo reference a negative video like the airport circle loop.
Tesla Again Has The Highest Accident Rate Of Any Auto Brand (link, no paywall).
Under The Hood Of Autonomous Vehicles (link).
Introducing Drivership: A New Framework for Good Driving (link).
Tesla robotaxis by June? Musk turns to Texas for hands-off regulation (link).
There is a billboard in Beverly Hills advertising a law firm for those involved in an “autonomous vehicle accident” (link). There’s a huge cadre of personal injury lawyers that go after Uber and Lyft, but since Waymos are getting into so few accidents (and rarely at fault), I’m not sure there will be much of a market here. Of course, the lawyers will still sue Waymo, I just don’t think they’ll have much of a case. Uber and Lyft on the other hand, incentivize their drivers to drive unsafely, so it’s not a shock that 43% of the fare is going to insurance costs.
Current state of Waymo in Phoenix (link).
What else we're reading
Take Rate | Marketplaces by Colin Gardiner: Marketplace Memo #5 (link).
#movingpeople by Barak Sas: FINN €1bn, Archer $300M, Lyft 🧑🤝🧑Mobileye, Getaround ❌🇺🇲, Turo ❌ IPO, Ush ☎️🚘 in Belgium and Bolt in 🇨🇦 (link).
Su$tainable Mobility Mobility by Alex Mitchell: 🗽Congestion pricing by the numbers (link).
Car Charts by Glenn Mercer: Car Affordability Has Nothing on Eggs (link).
Shout-outs
Big thanks to TDD reader Cory K for hitting the first ‘referral milestone’ with 6 new sign-ups! 🎉 I’m designing new TDD swag for her as we speak.
Substack is great at tracking referrals, so if there’s someone that you think would enjoy TDD, just forward this e-mail to them or use the referral button below. And I may just bribe you with swag also..
Until next week.
-Harry
Thanks for the shoutout!