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 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.