You mentioned that SF is densely populated. I presume more SF use taxis because it's cheaper going short distances than owning. I live in car centric Calgary, pop. 1.5M, but it's not near other dense populations. Do you think the Cdn market cities like Calgary will be added after another year, since there are only 9 US cities with that size of population? Will every city take a lot of testing before rollout?
Yes in SF, fewer people own cars, there's decent public transportation options and it's a big biking/two-wheel city. I'm not an expert on the Canadian ridehail market but my guess is that there's less overall rideshare demand compared to a similar sized US market (maybe regulatory, preferences, etc - not sure).
But the bigger barrier is the cold weather since Waymo has yet to announce a launch in a true cold weather city so I imagine they need to do that first in the US. So my best guess would be at least 2-3 years before Waymo hits Calgary, if not more.
that would be great. I live in Santa Monica and it seems like so many waymos are here. They are testing the next generation waymos (with drivers in them not running publicly) and I see them daily now.
BTW, they are testing Zoox (Amazon's autonomy solution,in the neighborhood and VW has said they will launch a VW van robotaxi here in LA next year too.
Nice. I grew up in Santa Monica and am just down the 10 in Beverlywood now so have seen the Zeeker's all over. Haven't seen the Zoox yet but yep I'm on top of the VW's - waiting for them :)
Great post as always! I think it's interesting when looking at market share to extrapolate going forward. It's clear that today Waymo has a great market position, novelty value, and a unique value proposition vs. Uber and Lyft.
What's interesting in my opinion is thinking forward: how much of the market could they capture at their current price per mile, and what is the realistic path to bringing that cost per mile down, which is the true promise of autonomy in growing the market. Otherwise, this is all taking part of one pie from the high-end shared ride category.
Yes I think they are 100% cannibalizing the existing rideshare market at this price point and market share. But there's nothing wrong with that.
SF is a good example since it's a dense city, only 7 x 7 miles and lots of early tech adopters/Waymo super fans. They're at 20.5% market share there and can probably increase that a bit more, but I'm still not convinced that your 'average rideshare customer' is going to wait longer and pay more for a Waymo vs an Uber.
So rough guess is that 20-30% is their market share cap in most cities with the current margins. And I think Waymo is ok with that. It seems like they would prefer to go for vertical growth and launch new markets (typically expensive, but not as bad when you have partners like Uber on the demand side, Moove on fleet operations, etc) to establish their brand and foohold, vs investing in existing markets to improve the margins.
I'll be sharing more in tomorrow's newsletter about NYC but tldr is they can get up to 921,851 trips per week in NYC just by capturing 20% of the market share (Waymo only does 250k trips per week across all 4 cities right now!).
Wondering about the cost data, is it detailed by market. My experience with Waymo in the Phoenix market is it is significantly cheaper then Uber/Lyft options.
The obi study looked at 90,000 rides in SF during April 2025 across waymo, Uber and Lyft. So definitely possible that it's cheaper in phx. in LA, seems consistently more expensive. If I had to guess, I would say 10 to 20% but 30 to 40% also totally possible.
You mentioned that SF is densely populated. I presume more SF use taxis because it's cheaper going short distances than owning. I live in car centric Calgary, pop. 1.5M, but it's not near other dense populations. Do you think the Cdn market cities like Calgary will be added after another year, since there are only 9 US cities with that size of population? Will every city take a lot of testing before rollout?
Yes in SF, fewer people own cars, there's decent public transportation options and it's a big biking/two-wheel city. I'm not an expert on the Canadian ridehail market but my guess is that there's less overall rideshare demand compared to a similar sized US market (maybe regulatory, preferences, etc - not sure).
But the bigger barrier is the cold weather since Waymo has yet to announce a launch in a true cold weather city so I imagine they need to do that first in the US. So my best guess would be at least 2-3 years before Waymo hits Calgary, if not more.
Awesome post. Will you keep updating each quarter? Very curious to see LA in particular
That's a good idea - I need a few inputs from Waymo, CPUC, etc though as I'm not sure I'd want to extrapolate much farther than ~3 months of data.
that would be great. I live in Santa Monica and it seems like so many waymos are here. They are testing the next generation waymos (with drivers in them not running publicly) and I see them daily now.
BTW, they are testing Zoox (Amazon's autonomy solution,in the neighborhood and VW has said they will launch a VW van robotaxi here in LA next year too.
Nice. I grew up in Santa Monica and am just down the 10 in Beverlywood now so have seen the Zeeker's all over. Haven't seen the Zoox yet but yep I'm on top of the VW's - waiting for them :)
FYI:
Good break down of the Zeekr - https://itcanthink.substack.com/p/the-first-mass-produced-robotaxi
MOIA CEO on my panel at Ride AI - https://itcanthink.substack.com/p/the-first-mass-produced-robotaxi
Great post as always! I think it's interesting when looking at market share to extrapolate going forward. It's clear that today Waymo has a great market position, novelty value, and a unique value proposition vs. Uber and Lyft.
What's interesting in my opinion is thinking forward: how much of the market could they capture at their current price per mile, and what is the realistic path to bringing that cost per mile down, which is the true promise of autonomy in growing the market. Otherwise, this is all taking part of one pie from the high-end shared ride category.
Yes I think they are 100% cannibalizing the existing rideshare market at this price point and market share. But there's nothing wrong with that.
SF is a good example since it's a dense city, only 7 x 7 miles and lots of early tech adopters/Waymo super fans. They're at 20.5% market share there and can probably increase that a bit more, but I'm still not convinced that your 'average rideshare customer' is going to wait longer and pay more for a Waymo vs an Uber.
So rough guess is that 20-30% is their market share cap in most cities with the current margins. And I think Waymo is ok with that. It seems like they would prefer to go for vertical growth and launch new markets (typically expensive, but not as bad when you have partners like Uber on the demand side, Moove on fleet operations, etc) to establish their brand and foohold, vs investing in existing markets to improve the margins.
I'll be sharing more in tomorrow's newsletter about NYC but tldr is they can get up to 921,851 trips per week in NYC just by capturing 20% of the market share (Waymo only does 250k trips per week across all 4 cities right now!).
Wondering about the cost data, is it detailed by market. My experience with Waymo in the Phoenix market is it is significantly cheaper then Uber/Lyft options.
The obi study looked at 90,000 rides in SF during April 2025 across waymo, Uber and Lyft. So definitely possible that it's cheaper in phx. in LA, seems consistently more expensive. If I had to guess, I would say 10 to 20% but 30 to 40% also totally possible.
Great data 👍 thanks!
This is great and cleanly put together, thanks! I had been thinking of making this to understand how Waymo is doing everywhere.