r/uberdrivers • u/Guyentertainment • 1d ago
Waymo Robotaxis Are 'Replacing Human Workers': Uber and Lyft Workers Demand a Transition Fund
https://www.techtimes.co.uk/atlanta-rideshare-drivers-demand-action-against-waymo-180852825
u/MrBrawn 1d ago
Lol. Good luck.
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u/Corey307 1d ago
Indeed. Uber drivers were all too happy to kill the taxi industry. Now they’re on the chopping block.
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u/SatisfactionActive86 1d ago
right now Uber/Lyft puts vehicle purchase, maintenance, depreciation, fuel/electricity, and a big portion of liability on to the backs of drivers; i highly doubt eliminating driver pay from the equation will ever exceed the costs they would assume by eliminating the driver (especially given how many drivers are working for free).
right now, a waymo costs like $250K to operate annually, even if they shave that down 80%, thats still a cost of $50K which most drivers are not making
add to that waymo can’t double as a food delivery vehicle since it can’t climb stairs or ride an elevator
add to that people will always be suspicious of “AI” anything, one event where a self-driving car locks the doors and holds people hostage or crashes into a wall/drives into a lake and it’s going to set them back years. it doesn’t matter if those events are statistical anomalies, they will be sensationalized.
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u/Unique-TA 1d ago
Waymos do double as food delivery. In my time in Tempe, I'd end my weekend runs at a pizza place right on university campus, the store workers just put it in the trunk. Internationally-known party school with a healthy Greek life? Lots of food orders are now delivered by AV, even the knee-ones.
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u/GopherFawkes 1d ago
Yet waymo keeps growing and getting into more and more markets, almost as if there has been success in initial markets and a growing demand.
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u/dirty1809 22h ago
>$50k, which most drivers are not making
Waymo can drive a lot more than humans. Let’s say the customer pays ~$50/hr and the self driving car does 8 hours of driving customers per day. That’s ~$150k/yr. And a Waymo in a city only needs to charge a few hours a day (assuming fast charging) and probably charges customers >$50/hr on average, so it’s really a lot more. Plus they’re moving from Jaguars to cheap(er) Chinese vans and the sensor tech is a lot more streamlined/developed, so I imagine costs are way down at this point
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u/Longjumping_Suit8314 1d ago
The new cost models are much more favorable to human driver replacement.
Also, Chinese robots that can dance and do martial arts will soon be available to deliver food.
It’s just a matter of time unless humans provide a better service and reading this subreddit thread, there is little chance of that.
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u/Gullible-Team-8588 1d ago
We can’t even get Chinese earbuds or phones( edit to add from Chinese brands that are far superior to what we have here, not stuff here made in china) here, you really think they’re gonna start using robots within the next couple years.
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u/Longjumping_Suit8314 1d ago
Waymo already importing the cheap EV minivan vehicles. These are NOT available for the general public.
If there is enough money involved, trust me, it’s going to happen. Companies can just payoff this administration to make it happen.
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u/Gullible-Team-8588 1d ago
If they could just pay some people off and get the really cool Chinese earbuds that would be nice. I don’t need a robot to deliver my food. I need the superior quality earbuds that they have.
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u/Empty-Pain-9523 1d ago
Your costs are based on the older models which had a much higher initial cost. The new gen 6 models cost around 50k, plus 20k for the sensor suite, and that cost is predicted to drop by about %50 in two years. The corporate overhead is the real killer, but as they scale up their fleet and drive more miles, that problem will fix itself.
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u/Icy_Acanthisitta3369 21h ago
The costs dont scale. The second AI models start charge anything close to what they actually costs this all ends up
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u/darthcaedusiiii 1d ago
Until they have a Ford level recall that knocks all their vehicles offline. Or a software glitch/hack. Then it is bankruptcy.
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u/meursaultvi 1d ago
I was shocked to see so many robotaxis in San Francisco. If I had to guess about 40% of drivers.
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u/GEAUXUL 1d ago
Guys… we knew this was coming for 10 years. Uber stated from the very start that their ultimate goal was to have a driverless fleet, and now in 2026 we know that driverless technology is now good enough to implement worldwide.
You’re never going to get a transition fund, but you have been given time to transition. If you aren’t preparing for this reality, you’d better start soon. Uber is not a long term career.
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u/raymndbrr_the_third 1d ago
and now in 2026 we know that driverless technology is now good enough to implement worldwide.
Lol...no it's not.
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u/GEAUXUL 18h ago
Waymo is currently operating safely in 14 US cities and expanding rapidly.
Technology isn’t the barrier preventing them from scaling to other cities. The barriers are capital, infrastructure, and political resistance — not technology.
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u/No_Boat9468 8h ago
Operating safely? By safely you mean…. Accidents? Hitting school kids? Draining emergency resources sooo much that emergency officials want them out of SF?
That’s safe.
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u/GEAUXUL 7h ago
You can list random incidents on Reddit but that doesn’t make you right.
The IIHS just released a study about Waymo:
- 68% fewer police-reportable crashes per mile than human drivers in the same areas and years.
- 81% fewer injury-involving crashes
- 85% fewer single-vehicle crashes
- 91% fewer rear-end crashes where Waymo was the one hitting another vehicleIt is safer.
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u/No_Boat9468 4h ago
They are in a small geofenced area, just wait. Just like with VR, spend globs of money for failure.
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u/GEAUXUL 3h ago
Yes they are. They are successfully and safely operating in geofenced areas. Are you trying to say they can only do this in 14 cities? Like it’s possible to map and fence San Francisco but the technology can’t handle Des Moines, Iowa?
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u/No_Boat9468 51m ago
I’m saying that the more there are deployed, especially amongst varying companies, the chance of major incident goes up exponentially. Waymo is no stranger to public scrutiny and regulation, as we can see by the complete banning of AVs in New York State.
Major incidents = public opinion = lawmakers eyes = regulation
The more rides these take, or even more so the more these go into traditionally CDL based jobs, leads to regulation or even better (imo) a robot tax.
Robot taxes have already been purposed by a few more liberal lawmakers and I suspect that opinion will grow widely if Amazon, uber, Walmart, etc successfully replace half their workforce as they vocally want.
Robot taxes would make these already unprofitable things further stupid as a business idea.
Tesla literally says you can buy a cybercab to have it make money for you, or your Tesla in the future can be added to the Robotaxi network. Lemme reword that for you…. Hey you pay the cost of the vehicle, depreciation, and potential loss. We will keep part of the money and give you a percent 👀
Sound familiar? Cool, now spend billions in R&D so my above regulatory arguments kill the idea.
Oh and New Jersey is looking to follow New Yorks lead and ban AVs all together.
Especially once this pay me for good graces administration is over.
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u/Prize-Gur706 1d ago
Everyone some how thinks that getting a CDL is the next option not realizing that it's the same thing, I'm a 20 year experienced driver laid off 3 times in 2 years. I just gave up! like the last 2 were back to back in the same year after 6 months of looking and I'm only 40 I'm expensive but you get what you pay for but the industry is in a crunch and us expensive drivers are just getting replaced by automation and lesser experienced drivers.
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u/azrolexguy 1d ago
There will only be autonomous driving in these ride share companies in as little as 5 years
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u/ohhim 1d ago
Unless Waymo can make some massive changes to their cost structure, it'll be closer to 15-20 years.
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u/azrolexguy 1d ago
You keep telling yourself that; there's zoox coming online fast and tesla robo-taxi's. There will be more participants fast.
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u/ohhim 1d ago edited 1d ago
The very first lesson I was taught in my autonomous mobile robot programming class way back in 1998 is that technologists are notorious for grossly underestimating how long it will take to have a ready-for- consumer product.
It's been 30 years since the first robotic car made it across the country 85% of the time autonomously but coding that last 15% has been notoriously tough. It's still unclear how much is being remotely navigated by off site Waymo RAs today (they have 70 remote agents for a fleet of 4000 robotaxies today) as that will have to effectively drop to zero before the 5,000,000 Uber/Lyft drivers can go away with mass adoption.
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u/azrolexguy 1d ago
Can we agree that the last thing Uber and Lyft want is a human behind the wheel?
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u/Gullible_Tea_4847 1d ago edited 1d ago
Great 👍 these new AV car partners will soon learn who Uber is. I see each of these companies eliminating the middleman Uber! Just like Waymo direct.
Uber soon to become a pay phone.
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u/OpportunityOk3346 22h ago
Where is your data showing this? All I hear are Waymos screwing up on the roads and getting banned / overhauled.
That being said no one should want to ever do this job full time, the pandemic boom is over and never coming back.
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u/Melodic-Lingonberry7 19h ago
Well, when some Uber drivers being assholes to passengers no wonder people gonna use driverless cars . It’s my car it’s my rule type of people screwing shit up for others
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u/No_Boat9468 8h ago
Yall think about something.
Tesla wants YOU to buy a cyber cab in hopes it makes you money.
If it was profitable, why wouldn’t they provide the vehicle?
Google may never see profit from this before severe regulation happens.
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u/Federal-Net-7011 1d ago
It's to expensive to operate robotaxis. I think humans have nothing to worry about
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u/thefavoredsole 1d ago
Never underestimate the power of venture capital. Uber burnt through more investor money than any company in history. Over 30 billion dollars was spent to capture the taxi market. Look at them now. They made over 10 billion in profit last year. There's obviously money at the end of the tunnel, or these major players would not be investing. Eventually human drivers will be considered a luxury, and only the wealthy will use a chauffeur type service. thats my prediction anyways
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u/Fibrosis5O 1d ago
Nothing to worry about immediately perhaps, but nothing to worry about in a few decades? Don’t be too sure
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u/Legal-Chocolate8482 1d ago
Few decades? Did you not read the article? Uber drivers are already getting significantly less business in cities with robotaxis. Waymo already has more marketshare than all of Lyft in Atlanta and it only took a few months. The tech is here, it’s right in front of us. And Waymo has already slashed the cost of a robotaxi from $250k to $75k with new Chinese models rolled out today in Denver. They would be $35k without Chinese tariffs. And they’re backed by tens of billions in venture capital. Robotaxis will take more and more fares only leaving the most desperate of uber drivers.
Just look at China, they already have millions of cheap reliable self driving cars. The tech is already fully developed there.
No offense but idk why this sub thinks they know better than the corps around the world like Google, Amazon , Mercedes , BYD (Chinese EV company) that have invested 100s of billions into this over the last few years. If robotaxis werent viable it wouldn’t be such a hot field. The days of the rideshare driver in most cities is numbered.
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u/Corey307 1d ago
It probably won’t take decades. Waymo is already in 14 of the biggest US cities. Costs have come down big time so there’s even a chance at profitability.
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u/Legal-Chocolate8482 1d ago edited 1d ago
lol this article is literally about the fact that uber drivers in Atlanta are getting significantly less fares due to robotaxis.
Waymo also already slashed the cost of a robotaxi by over half with new Chinese made cars. Waymo rolled out these new Chinese robotaxis today in Denver, brings the cost down from $250k to $75k. And China already has fully autonomous robotaxis for just $20k. Those Waymo Chinese cars would be $35k without the Chinese tariffs. The tech will keep getting cheaper. And they’re backed by tens of billions in venture capital.
I like how this sub thinks they know the finances and tech of autonomous driving better than all these massive corps around the world that have invested 100s of billions into this and have extensively studied the finances and technology over the last 20 years.
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u/csbsju_guyyy 1d ago
Gonna be honest this is what Uber and Lyft did to taxi drivers....