Waymo’s Not-So-Secret Weapon for Rapid Growth

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Final Up to date on: twenty ninth April 2025, 03:29 am

CleanTechnica reader “rawlsio” lately made a very interesting point relating to Waymo robotaxis. Responding to a stat in my article “Waymo’s Quickly Taking More Market Share Than I Expected” wherein I famous (and was shocked) that Waymo already had 22% of the rideshare market in San Francisco, he wrote, “Yeah — Waymo is ubiquitous in San Francisco. It seems like more than 22% because the Waymo cars are more obvious and uniform than Uber or Lyft cars. The service is excellent, especially with the expansion to SFO airport.” His level actually caught, and grew into an even bigger takeaway.

One of many hardest issues with new tech is bringing consciousness to increasingly more of the market, however even more durable than that’s typically bringing perception that the brand new tech is frequent and that it’s in all probability time they need to actually contemplate shopping for/paying for it. I nonetheless see it on a regular basis with individuals and electrical vehicles. Regardless that I see EVs all over the place, most individuals don’t acknowledge most of those vehicles on the highway as electrical vehicles. They only see vehicles, they usually nonetheless assume EV tech isn’t fairly prepared, that they nonetheless want some breakthrough car with 700 miles of vary and 10-second charging to return out, and that it’s not fairly time to go electrical but.

With ridesharing, Ubers and Lyfts are practically invisible to non-riders, and even taxis are fairly invisible. All of them mix in. (Properly, not in NYC the place taxis are all yellow, however in lots of cities.) So, even when ridesharing turns into fairly widespread, most of us not utilizing it should not conscious of that.

NeverthelessWaymo autos stand out. They’re properly branded and apparent. They’ve eye-catching lidar sensors on their roofs. Add within the novelty of them not having drivers, they usually actually stand out and get individuals pondering. So, in cities the place they’re ample sufficient, that additional consciousness enhance and branding in all probability goes a great distance in dashing up curiosity and adoption.

So, this received me pondering that Waymo may proceed to see hypergrowth in cities the place the corporate feels snug scaling up. And, really, that matches with the truth that Waymo seemingly doesn’t need to roll out any incentives or referral bonuses to get extra prospects in its vehicles. It enters a market, scales up, and is seemingly already in a position to hit fairly excessive penetration charges with out incentives. We’ll see what comes down the highway (a little bit of a pun supposed there), and we’ll proceed to trace Waymo’s progress, however this one small however notable advertising and marketing profit has me significantly extra bullish concerning the firm’s progress prospects than I already was!

Now, a giant query continues to be how a lot Waymo can get individuals out of their very own vehicles and into its robotaxis. It’s one factor to scale up and take a giant proportion of taxi or ridesharing markets in main cities — and that’s success by most individuals’s requirements — however it’s one thing completely extra if Waymo is ready to get individuals to go away their very own vehicles at house, ultimately promote them, and swap to repeatedly using in Waymos for his or her commuting, errands, leisure journeys, and so forth. And that faces severe barriers.