Waymo rides, Waymo revenue — The death of self-driving cars has been greatly exaggerated GMs Cruise aims to turn self-driving into a billion-dollar business.

Timothy B. Lee – Jun 1, 2023 11:00 am UTC Enlarge / The latest iteration of Waymo’s self-driving technology is based on the Jaguar I-PACE.Waymo reader comments 0 with

Seven years ago, hype about self-driving cars was off the charts. It wasnt just Tesla CEO Elon Muskwho has been making outlandish predictions about self-driving technology since 2015. In 2016, Ford set a goal to start selling cars without steering wheels by 2021. The same year, Lyft predicted that a majority of rides on its network would be autonomous by 2021.

None of that happened. Instead, the last few years have seen brutal consolidation. Uber sold off its self-driving project in 2020, and Lyft shut down its effort in 2021. Then, last October, Ford and Volkswagen announced they were shutting down their self-driving joint venture called Argo AI.

Today, a lot of people view self-driving technology as an expensive failure whose moment has passed. The Wall Street Journals Chris Mims argued in 2021 that self-driving cars could be decades away . Last year, Bloombergs Max Chafkin declared that self-driving cars are going nowhere.

But a handful of well-funded projects have continued to plug away at the problem. The leaders are Waymoformerly the Google self-driving car projectand Cruise, a startup that is majority-owned by GM.

These companies dont believe self-driving technology is decades away because theyre already testing it in Phoenix and San Francisco. And they are preparing to launch in additional cities in the coming months. Waymo expects to increase passenger rides tenfold between now and the summer of 2024. Cruise is aiming for $1 billion in revenue in 2025, which would require something like a 50-fold expansion of its current service.

There is no guarantee they will succeed. Even if they iron out all the technical problems, it will take many years to make these services profitable.

But I think the pendulum of public opinion has now swung too far in the pessimistic direction. Self-driving technology has steadily improved over the last few years, and theres every reason to expect that progress to continue.

Its definitely happening a lot slower than people anticipated back in 2017, industry analyst Sam Abuelsamid told me. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t progress being made.

I would not be surprised if by the end of 2025, each of those companies is operating in 10 to 12 cities across the US to varying degrees of scale, Abuelsamid added. Smoother and more confident

Alex Roy has had a colorful career. He has been a rally racer and a journalist . He joined Argo AI in 2019 and stayed until it was shut down last year. Roy now lives in the Phoenix area doing consulting work related to self-driving cars. He also hosts a podcast about the self-driving sector.

In short, Roy knows a lot about cars in general and self-driving cars in particular. And he has nothing but good things to say about Waymos driverless taxi service in the Phoenix area.

I’ve now taken several Waymo rides, and they’re exceptionally good, Roy told me.

When I talked to Roy last Thursday, he had just taken a Waymo ride from the Phoenix airport to his home in Scottsdale. Technically, Waymo cars dont pick people up at the airportairport pickup areas are still too chaotic for thatbut they do the next best thing, serving two stops along the airports fast and free Sky Train .

I also recently talked to Joel Johnson, a Phoenix-area college student who has created dozens of YouTube videos of his rides in driverless Waymo vehicles. Johnson told me that Waymos service has been steadily improving over the last three years.

A big step came late last year with the debut of Jaguar I-PACE SUVs outfitted with Waymos fifth-generation hardware . Johnson told me that the new vehicles represented a huge leap in performance over Waymos previous Chrysler Pacifica minivans and were measurably better in many respects.

The new driverless Jaguars were much smoother and more confident, Johnson said. An added bonus: Whereas the Pacificas trunk was filled with computer hardware, the Jaguars trunk was empty and available for passenger use. Page: 1 2 3 4 Next → reader comments 0 with Timothy B. Lee Timothy is a senior reporter covering tech policy and the future of transportation. He lives in Washington DC. Advertisement Channel Ars Technica ← Previous story Related Stories Today on Ars