Waymo Launches Teen Accounts in Phoenix
Tesla robotaxi to hit the Bay Area and AZ soon, why Americans can’t buy the world’s best electric cars and what I learned watching 78 videos from Tesla's Austin launch!
Hey, it’s Harry! Welcome to the 117 new subscribers who have signed up since our last newsletter. We also just hit 2,000 subscribers this week so I’d like to thank all of you for subscribing, reading and sharing! It’s been a blast so far, and the momentum looks promising. To all my early subscribers, I owe you one!
Top Stories of the Week
Waymo introduces teen accounts for the first time in Phoenix (link). We covered this story back in March, and the product is finally rolling out. Teens in Metro Phoenix can request Waymo rides through teen accounts that are connected to their parents’ accounts (parents send the invites). Waymo says specially trained agents will be available to support teen riders, and parents will be looped in if anything comes up. Teens can also share live trip updates with their parents, who will get real-time tracking and all ride receipts.
Waymo teen accounts are initially only being offered to our riders in Metro Phoenix, but we intend to offer teen accounts in other cities in the future. If you’re interested in signing up your teen, visit waymo.com/teens to learn more.
Teens will be an interesting category for Waymo since I think parents will pay a premium for rides, and Waymo has the chance to lock in the entire family with a subscription. They also have the chance to build a life long relationship with a young customer. Uber and Lyft promised for years that they would get people to ditch their cars but that hasn’t come to fruition. Gen Alpha though (teens) could be the generation that goes carless and that would represent a step function change in demand for rideshare companies. Instead of hailing a ride 1 to 2 times a week, a carless customer could need 5-10x more rides! That’s one big way AVs could expand the rideshare total addressable market (TAM).
Tesla robotaxi to launch in Bay Area “in a month or two” per Elon (link). And Austin will also be expanding to a larger service area this weekend. I’ve criticized other companies for expanding testing before launching paid driverless rides so my take is the same for this situation. As we highlighted previously, I think there is still some work to be done in Austin before launching paid driverless rides.
Tesla has also reached out to the Arizona Department of Transportation to begin the certification process to operate an autonomous robotaxi service in the state (link).
Waymo robotaxis are heading to Philadelphia and NYC (link). Waymo’s “road trips” don’t always mean a commercial launch is around the corner. This year, they’ve done similar runs in cities like Houston, Orlando, Vegas, San Diego, and San Antonio. These trips usually start with a few human-driven cars equipped with Waymo’s tech to map the area, followed by autonomous testing with safety drivers. The data helps their engineers fine-tune the system. Some road trips have led to launches though. In Philly, Waymo says its cars will focus on complex areas like downtown and the freeways, with vehicles driving day and night through neighborhoods from North Central to Eastwick and out to the Delaware River.
Jon McNeill on Why AVs Could Crush Uber and Lyft (link). My latest interview is with Jon McNeill, former Tesla president and Lyft COO. When I was reaching out to guests, Jon was at the top of my list since he has experience at both Tesla and Lyft. So naturally, we chatted about the recent Tesla robotaxi launch, and how Tesla’s approach to autonomy stacks up against top players like Waymo. We also got into Uber and Lyft’s current AV strategies and what the road ahead might look like for them. He was surprisingly bearish on their future prospects.
Cool Rides
‘Took my first ride in a Waymo. Moments like this feel like signposts—reminders that we’re not just talking about the future of mobility… we’re living it’ (link).
‘I’m sitting in a car driving 95km/h, I’m on the German Motorway, I’m in the driver’s seat, I’m not touching the wheel, I’m not looking at the road, I am legally allowed to be on my phone right now, Level 3 autonomous driving is cool’ (link).
‘We are living in the future! I recently took a Waymo self-driving car to a networking event. As a commercial finance professional, I’m constantly reminded how rapidly technology is transforming every facet of how we do business and connect with one another’ (link).
AV/Human behaving badly
‘Waymo helping compact fresh asphalt in Atlanta 🫠’ (link). I feel like a human could have made this mistake too - shouldn’t construction areas be blocked off lol?
‘Here's what happens when you fall asleep in Robotaxi’ (link). Probably staged, but it was a good test!
Other Stuff
‘What I learned watching 78 videos from Tesla's Austin robotaxis’ (link). Great article by
. I watched all the Tesla robotaxi 'misstep videos' last week but didn’t think to watch the positive ones. I’m still cautiously optimistic about Tesla’s progress so far though. There haven’t been any major issues, but that’s to be expected with a small deployment of just 11 (or so) vehicles. For reference, a full-time Uber driver will do around 1,000 miles a week, so Tesla probably drove around 11,000 miles that first week. And like Tim said, humans will go hundreds of thousands of miles without a serious accident, so it’s not surprising that we haven’t seen any major accidents yet. In fact, it should be table stakes. And when it comes to deaths, the fatality rate for human drivers is actually only 1.33 per 100 million miles driven.Ford Debuts World’s First Autonomous Car To Leave Factory And Drive Straight To Shop For Repairs (link). Funny fake news headline from The Babylon Bee lol.
To speed or not to speed? Tesla and Google’s Waymo disagree (link). This is an interesting debate considering I’ve advocated for a ‘haul ass mode’ before. I’ll be the first to admit that there are times where I’m in a hurry and if AVs can speed yet maintain high levels of safety, I would be happy to have this option.
Excellent vizualisation of Waymo's commercialization timeline from BNEF. Waymo has managed to compress the timeline from roughly 4 years in Phoenix to just about 14 months in Austin and Atlanta (link). The chart might be a few weeks old (no paid trips in Atlanta yet), but it still gives a pretty clear picture of how quickly Waymo's been expanding across U.S. cities lately.
This Is Why Tesla’s Robotaxi Launch Needed Human Babysitters (link, no paywall).
‘Uber is going to get eaten alive by robotaxis. Just a matter of time…(link).’ Well that’s a bold statement! Excited to host Ross on the TDD podcast soon to get into this topic and more.
How Did Tesla Self-Deliver A New Car When Its Robotaxi Needs A Human? (link, no paywall).
Why Americans Can’t Buy the World’s Best Electric Car (link). I think most people agree that the quality of Chinese cars 5-10 years ago was terrible. But since then, the vehicles have gotten much better and are selling for a fraction of the cost relative to US cars. Chinese government subsidies are often cited as the reason for this transition but I don’t think that’s the whole story. Sure, they may have played a part but the reality is that today, the Chinese car industry is standing on its own, and selling high quality, luxurious vehicles. We are shielded from them here in the United States due to tariffs, but around the world they are proliferating.
Tesla was forced to reimburse Full Self-Driving in arbitration after failing to deliver (link).
What else we're reading
It Can Think! By
: The First Mass-Produced Robotaxi Is Here (link). Great analysis here by Chris on the all in cost of the new Waymo Zeekr where he arrives at a figure of $75,000. The big question though is how many of these vehicles Waymo has (I’m guessing a few hundred) and if they’ll be able to get more without having to pay a massive tariff.Neat Jobs
Senior Director, Autonomous Business Development at Lyft (link) via Stephen Hayes.
Have a job you’d like to share here? Send it to me and I’ll happily include it in next week’s edition.
Shout-outs
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Until next week.
-Harry