A central premise of robotaxis is that high usage and lower labor costs will ultimately make it a cheap transportation option. That is still far from true, but now there\u2019s some data that gives us an idea of by how much.<\/p>\n
Obi, an app that aggregates real-time pricing and pick-up times across multiple ride-hailing services, has just published what it\u2019s calling the \u201cfirst in-depth examination of Waymo\u2019s pricing strategy.<\/a>\u201d The company found Waymo\u2019s self-driving car rides to be consistently more expensive than comparative offerings from Uber and Lyft \u2013 and it doesn\u2019t seem to matter.<\/p>\n The report, shared exclusively with TechCrunch, is based on a month\u2019s worth of data collected between March 25 and April 25 in San Francisco, California. Obi pulled nearly 90,000 \u201coffer records\u201d from Waymo, Lyft\u2019s \u201cstandard\u201d offering, and UberX in order to compare price and ETA. It then compared ride requests from the same times and routes. Obi found Lyft offered the lowest average price at $14.44. Uber was next at $15.58. Waymo\u2019s average price across the month\u2019s worth of data was $20.43.<\/p>\n Ashwini Anburajan, Obi\u2019s chief revenue officer, told TechCrunch this was somewhat surprising given the early popularity of Waymo\u2019s service. Waymo said in May it\u2019s providing 250,000 paid trips per week<\/a> across its first four cities. Higher pricing has apparently not dimmed that excitement.<\/p>\n \u201cColloquially, there is an idea that autonomous vehicles are something that will erode driver jobs and put drivers at risk. And I think the irony of what we\u2019ve seen is that it\u2019s actually quite expensive to run an AV, and that that\u2019s not going to be happening, at least in the near term,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n At peak hours, Obi found Waymo\u2019s average price to be about $11 more expensive than a Lyft and nearly $9.50 pricier than an Uber.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t expect consumers being willing to pay up to $10 more,\u201d Anburajan said. \u201cI think [that] speaks to a real sense of excitement for technology, novelty, and a real preference to sometimes be in the car without a driver.\u201d<\/p>\n Obi found that not only was Waymo more expensive, but there was greater variability in its pricing than with Uber or Lyft.<\/p>\n Anburajan said one explanation is that Waymo\u2019s pricing model is not as sophisticated. Uber and Lyft, she said, have had more than a decade to refine how they price rides. Those platforms are also a bit more dynamic, with drivers clocking in and out on their own time, or joining or abandoning the gig work altogether.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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