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As long as the expensive bits continue to be externalized (i.e. publicly funded), I think that there might not be any cases that aren't profitable.

The expensive bits being:

- road maintenance

- theft and vandalism policing

Surely, once Waymo covers most cities, the marginal cost of getting one extra waymo car on the road should be substantially lower than a Bus (and maybe even a Marshrutka?)

...And then, once you have the cars on the road, to avoid increasing waiting times too much (which will lead users to prefer alternative transport methods, walking, cycling, etc.) you need to have slack/extra-capacity in any area that you're serving.

This means that I don't see why Waymo might not expand even in remote mountain towns: they are not going to have a massive fleet, but keeping one or two cars there shouldn't have a different overhead than for a Waymo car serving a city.

(the only caveat might be in making sure that the overnight depot/parking lot won't be too far from the area served).

I think that would be pretty cool, if it means that people won't have to drive themselves anymore... but I'm also quite concerned about the consequences this might have for public transport: if its usage numbers falls, and thus public investments in it stops, entire small town might end up depending on extremely few (one?) self-driving taxi providers.




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