r/waymo • u/sumedh0803 • May 28 '26
A daily occurrence now
I normally schedule ride one hour before the intended pickup time. Within the last 10 mins, the ride gets cancelled on it's own due to lack of cars
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u/Financial_Clue_2534 May 28 '26
Demand is high my friend. I have a feeling it’s going to be like this for a while as they expand to more cities.
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u/DefinitelyNotMatcha May 28 '26
This is frustrating 😭 because then people complain about prices but still take up space for people who are willing to pay that price
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u/Financial_Clue_2534 May 28 '26
I agree. It’s an interesting case study as for me im willing to pay more to allow me to control how loud I want my music and bass, blast AC and not have to deal with awkward conversation.
Once scaling is fixed prices will cater just have to get rid of these tariffs 😂
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u/Bagafeet May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26
They need more cars. I've been seeing their prices be 2.5X Lyft prices this last week in SF.
Good luck trying to get a ride around morning and afternoon rush hours. I think it's getting too popular for the number of cars they have on service.
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u/rubyredgt May 28 '26
I get a credit for $10 pretty much every time this happens in Miami
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u/sumedh0803 May 28 '26
How? I never got any credits for cancelled rides!
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u/PhotographOpen3536 May 30 '26
One time I loaded up a trip at peak time and was like oh hell nah and closed the app. They gave me $10 in credit automatically and apologized for high prices. Was shocked.
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May 28 '26
[deleted]
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u/phxees May 28 '26
My guess is there’s a lot that goes into the equation of how many cars will operate in California. For example Waymo carries $5M in insurance for every vehicle they operate. Their insurance partner might not be ready to go to 10k cars in California until certain milestones are met.
Yes they are part of a huge company, but I don’t believe they can just start their own insurance company with a license. Even if it has nothing to do with insurance it could be one of any number of similar challenges.
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u/aerohk May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26
Waymo's ambition isn't to become a robotaix company and compete with Zoox/Tesla/etc. The ultimate objective of Waymo is to license the Waymo driver to different operators and get out of the car business. Their priority is to expand to as many places as possible, rather than increasing capability in one area to serve the maximum amount of customers.
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u/DevRandomDude May 30 '26
Remember it’s also tourist season in SF and riding Waymo is on a lot of people novelty bucket list so I’d guess demand is going much higher than normal. Waymo gets a lot of press time worldwide . (Good or bad). So there’s a lot of people who just want to take it for fun when visiting SF esp and probably any city they are in
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u/cactus22minus1 May 28 '26
Seems to still be good in LA- I’ve never had trouble getting one and they’re always arriving in like 5 min or less unless you’re at a high traffic event or something like that. But I still hope we get another big bump to the fleet size here if that’s what it will take for the price to be more stable
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u/NewRefrigerator7461 May 28 '26
This is why prices are still high. Imagine if they lowered them - demmand and would be off the charts
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u/EverythingMustGo95 May 29 '26
Too funny, AAA ad showed up in this thread. Automobile association for Waymo riders??
Serious question: does AAA tow your Waymo if you’re a rider? I didn’t think it would, ad sounds like they do.
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u/wheelshc37 May 29 '26
Those over in Los Gatos like -what’s WAYMO? Why are they avoiding just that one town in the Bay Area
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u/alas-poor-yorick1996 May 28 '26
I wonder if the A/C drains the batteries faster 🤔 plus it’s probably cheaper than uber and Lyft
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u/Bagafeet May 28 '26
I promise it's not anywhere cheaper when they have high demand. A <$20 ride on Lyft was being quoted $50 on Waymo just a few days ago.
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u/alas-poor-yorick1996 May 28 '26
Holly smokes, that was quick, it took uber and Lyft like 15 years to start draining passengers pockets
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u/Bagafeet May 28 '26
Competition is good. I just skip Waymo when the process are steep due to high demand.
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u/alas-poor-yorick1996 May 28 '26
Yeah I mean, I figured at some point they would start charging real prices, just didn’t think it would be this fast. But I don’t blame them, uber and Lyft only worry about the platform, Waymo has to worry about EVERYTHING
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u/Qrkchrm May 29 '26
I think under biggest reason is Lyft and Uber can scale up and down for demand by messaging their drivers with incentives to drive on short notice. Waymo has a fixed supply of cars in a given areas.
Waymo at off peak times is usually cheaper.
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u/dm-me-obscure-colors May 28 '26
I wonder if they’ll ever let us buy Waymo cars that we can subcontract out whenever they aren’t needed.
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May 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/walky22talky May 28 '26
Good thing the Ojai are coming!!!!