Robotics

creating and destroying; built flying cars & autonomous vehicles, now building /faust, more here: /july, web: july.rocks

Generally disagree. Waymo’s unit economics are starting to look good, and now it’s time to pour in some capital to scale

$5.6 billion / $150k is around 40k vehicles

The Model Y was the most-produced vehicle in 2023 with ~1.4 million vehicles 

It’s also interesting to note that robo taxis (hypothetically) can cover more rides in a city with less per vehicle, effectively taking off 80-90% of vehicles off the road. So you’re really getting 10x that (~300k vehicles if they were owned privately)

creating and destroying; built flying cars & autonomous vehicles, now building roc.camera, writings: july.rocks

what's the right metric for judging unit economics

blockspace babe. cultural attaché from ‘06 twitter. adjacent possible fanatic 🌐 UTC–5

Can the product or service you are offering make more money in the long run compared to how much it costs to make it and let people know about it

One factor to add:

Google is looking to diversify income streams as Perplexity and others start sucking from Google search over the next 5+ years unless they manage to get Google great again.

(Not a big factor today, but they know what’s happening)

Waymo investment also carries a higher importance which translates to will for allocating cash, just by being a moonshot that looks very promising.