[HN Gopher] DoorDash and Waymo launch autonomous delivery servic...
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DoorDash and Waymo launch autonomous delivery service in Phoenix
Author : ChrisArchitect
Score : 190 points
Date : 2025-10-16 14:04 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (about.doordash.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (about.doordash.com)
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Waymo post: https://waymo.com/blog/2025/10/your-doordash-order-
| delivered...
| whatever1 wrote:
| Does it still cost an arm and a leg to order though ?
| mouse_ wrote:
| It probably costs more
| barbazoo wrote:
| Should presumably get cheaper now that there's fewer humans in
| the loop. But from looking at their prices I'm always assuming
| it's meant for affluent people paying a premium to save time
| and effort so maybe it doesn't need to be cheaper.
| hypeatei wrote:
| > Should presumably get cheaper now that there's fewer humans
| in the loop
|
| They barely pay the humans in the loop now, apparently. I
| don't see them lowering costs because of this but I guess
| we'll see.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Should presumably get cheaper now that there's fewer humans
| in the loop._
|
| It seems more likely that they'll keep the prices as they are
| and make some excuse about "shareholder value."
|
| They've already acclimated two entire generations to paying
| crazy amounts for food delivery. Why would they start
| charging less?
|
| Until there is competition, they'll keep feeding off of the
| fatted calf. And completion is likely a decade or more away.
| astrange wrote:
| The competition is grocery delivery, which is a lot
| cheaper.
| ge96 wrote:
| That's the thing though it doesn't go to the humans as a
| driver
|
| That's why drivers try to take you off the platform and pay
| in cash/venmo
| GoatInGrey wrote:
| The prices will be set as high as the supply and demand curve
| allows. Considering that they're the only autonomous car
| provider in operation, that curve will not be consumer-
| friendly.
| xnx wrote:
| > The prices will be set as high as the supply and demand
| curve allows.
|
| Absolutely
|
| > Considering that they're the only autonomous car provider
| in operation, that curve will not be consumer-friendly.
|
| Waymo+Doordash also competes against non-autonomous
| delivery.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| What could "the curve will not be consumer-friendly" mean
| in this context?
|
| The whole point of creating a robot taxi service is to sell
| to consumers. If it's not consumer-friendly, then consumers
| won't buy it, which defeats the point?
|
| Robot taxis are hardly a staple one needs to exist, people
| have been easily living without robot taxis, and if the
| price is consumer-unfriendly, they will simply not use
| them.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Just wait till they offer a "tip your driver" when there is
| no driver... It would be absurd but I wouldn't put it past
| them.
| asdff wrote:
| I mean waymo is the same price as ordering a human driver.
| Charging less is leaving money on the table now that this
| pricing has been established in the consumer mindshare.
| standardUser wrote:
| No tip, which for me is the majority of the "extra" cost on
| food delivery.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| Spent last week in Phoenix, rode Waymo a dozen times. Autonomous
| taxis are the future. Don't have to tip, don't have to worry
| about pissing off the driver if I'm only going a few blocks.
| Price is reasonable, seems less than Uber or a standard taxi.
|
| Question is how many humans will forgo owning a car altogether
| once autonomous vehicles are ubiquitous.
| whatever1 wrote:
| You can still tip the shareholders. Like DoorDash did until it
| got caught.
| austinpena wrote:
| Or Like Dave App or Chime.
|
| Fun fact about Dave App's tipping. If you bring the value to
| zero you saw an animation of a kid's food being taken away
| from them.
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-
| releases/2024/11/...
| ryandrake wrote:
| Wow, that FTC case gets worse and worse the farther into it
| you read. What a scumbag company. It's like they opened the
| "Dark Patterns Unleashed" book and followed every example.
| ginko wrote:
| How can I know my tip actually goes to the shareholders and
| isn't squandered by executives?
| xnx wrote:
| > The prices will be set as high as the supply and demand curve
| allows. Considering that they're the only autonomous car
| provider in operation, that curve will not be consumer-
| friendly.
|
| Or go from being an N car household to an N-1 car household.
| zobzu wrote:
| in some towns (like SF) folks have used Waymo thousands of
| times - its everywhere, for a good reason - while its not
| always faster, it's more consistent, pleasant and safe.
| McNulty2 wrote:
| "don't have to tip" is a completely separate and solvable issue
| without autonomous vehicles.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It isn't when it is cultural. There is nothing forcing people
| to tip, except not wanting to feel shame or be shamed by
| others. For example, while out on a date.
| toephu2 wrote:
| I don't like the wait time though. I don't want to wait 5
| minutes for my Waymo to arrive for a 10 minute trip down to the
| grocery store when I can wait 0 minutes and hop in my own car
| and just drive there myself.
|
| I do like autonomous cars though, but they won't completely
| remove car ownership.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Something's wrong with the city if you have to take a taxi just
| to go a few blocks.
| asdff wrote:
| Better question is why people are blind to their local bus
| offerings. I find them highly convenient.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| A lot of bus routes suck and people don't like to plan
| ahead for _how_ they 'll get someplace, so they often
| default to the most general transportation available
| (personal vehicles) if the transit network isn't good
| enough for everyday tasks.
|
| As an example, my wife's 15m car commute would take 45m by
| bus transfer to the nearest stop, which is a couple miles
| from the destination on a freeway onramp. The transit
| system is fixing it, but that date is 3 years away. That's
| still better than the routes some people have.
|
| And lest you think the local transit agency sucks (by
| American standards), they don't. They just prioritize
| office workers heading to/from downtown instead of people
| moving radially through the metro area.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| I had to carry a couple of gallons of dairy for a trade show.
| Too heavy for the 15 minute walk. First world problem, I
| suppose, but Waymo was a convenient point-to-piont option.
| lpribis wrote:
| Americans scraping the bottom of the barrel to avoid investing
| in public transport.
| mbesto wrote:
| > Question is how many humans will forgo owning a car
| altogether once autonomous vehicles are ubiquitous.
|
| Not any time soon. There are WAY too many edge cases that
| autonomous vehicles are just scratching the surface on.
| crazygringo wrote:
| When autonomous grocery delivery becomes common, that's going to
| be huge for people without cars.
|
| Obviously you can already get delivery from Whole Foods,
| FreshDirect, etc., but it's expensive due to the drivers.
|
| And public transport and bikeshares are great for transporting
| _you_ , but not for trying to carry four or six bags of groceries
| along with you.
| Zambyte wrote:
| If people were legally allowed to live near grocery stores,
| they wouldn't feel the need to carry four to six bags of
| groceries along with them.
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| > If people were legally allowed to live near grocery stores
|
| What are you talking about? What backwaters country is this?
| In many places in the world, people live literally on top of
| grocery stores, such law would be ridiculed until the law
| makers have to socially isolate themselves if they tried to
| come up with something so stupid.
| Zambyte wrote:
| The US, which is where Phoenix is. And yes, my point is
| that we (in the US) should have walkable (and bikeable)
| cities, like much of the rest of the world.
| xnx wrote:
| 100 yards isn't a walkable distance in Phoenix in the
| summer.
| Zambyte wrote:
| Yes it is.
| xnx wrote:
| I wouldn't want any elderly person I knew walking that
| distance in any of the 3 weeks Phoenix typically spends
| over 100 degrees (even hotter over pavement).
| Zambyte wrote:
| 100 yards is less than a block. Did you mean to say a
| longer distance?
|
| And yeah, walkable cities includes infrastructure that
| does not magnify the sun at pedestrians (see: shade,
| plants)
| asdff wrote:
| You know what desert cultures around the world do to
| avoid this phenomenon? They just go outside in the
| mornings and evenings.
| afavour wrote:
| I assume OP is talking about US zoning laws which separate
| residential zones from commercial ones.
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| But in cities and towns you must have mixed zoning like
| the rest of the world?
| evandev wrote:
| > the median distance to the nearest food store for the
| overall U.S. population was 0.9 miles, with 40 percent of
| the U.S. population living more than 1 mile from a food
| store. The median distance to the third-nearest food
| store for the overall population was 1.7 miles. When the
| ERS researchers looked at rural food store access, they
| found that the median distance to the nearest and the
| third-nearest food store was 3.1 miles and 6.1 miles,
| respectively.
|
| https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2019/june/u-s-
| shoppers-...
| macNchz wrote:
| The great majority of development in American cities over
| the last 75 years has been single-use, with neighborhoods
| of exclusively single-family houses separated from nearby
| commercial strips with big parking lots along wide roads.
|
| The downtown/center of older cities may still have mixed
| use, and there have been changes happening in recent
| years to allow/build more apartments and mixed use areas,
| but, generally outside of the densest parts of the
| largest cities commercial and residential areas are
| required to be separate, with personal cars as the
| primary/only way to get between them.
|
| This has been a bit of a self-reinforcing phenomenon,
| IMO, as car-first infrastructure puts people at the mercy
| of traffic congestion, and means that any apartment
| building or business in their vicinity will result in
| more cars passing through, more congestion, more
| competition for parking, as well as the presence of the
| large parking lots that cities mandate for any new
| construction, which themselves make it unpleasant to get
| around in any other way.
| devilbunny wrote:
| In older areas, some. But practically anything after WW2,
| not nearly as much.
|
| It's somewhat misleading to talk about distance-to-X in a
| lot of American places. I live less than a mile from the
| nearest grocery as the crow flies, but if I wanted to
| walk there I have to traverse my entire street to get to
| an exit road (as opposed to walking out my back gate; the
| whole back is fenced because the exit road is directly
| behind my house). Then I have to walk down a fairly busy
| one-lane-each-way road with no sidewalks or shoulders
| present (i.e., you're going to be walking in a shallow
| drainage ditch - hope it's not raining!) for a few
| hundred meters, cross two busy multilane roads, and walk
| across an unshaded parking lot.
| grim_io wrote:
| Bless your non-merican heart :_)
| arrosenberg wrote:
| They are talking about US suburbs. For example, the house I
| grew up in is over a mile to the nearest grocery and you
| have to cross two large intersections on the way.
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| The intersection stuff sucks, but "over a mile" seems to
| be between 1.5 to 2km, is that considered far to walk in
| the US? Measuring where I go to have my morning coffee at
| a cafe each day, it seems to be 1.3km away, and I walk
| there and back every morning...
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Are you carrying your groceries to the coffee shop? Also,
| walking places in US suburbs is a miserable experience,
| especially in the Southwest where it gets hot. Everything
| is spread out with large parking lots, sidewalks are a
| maybe, the roads are busy and there is no shade or sound
| dampening.
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| > Are you carrying your groceries to the coffee shop?
|
| Obviously no. But where I lived ~20 years ago the nearest
| grocery was a 20 minute walk there and then 20 minute
| walk back with two or four shopping bags with stuff, and
| I wasn't the only one walking there when needing to do
| shopping.
|
| I think it's more common than not out in the world that
| things are far away so you need to spend awful amount of
| time on just getting places. Unless you live in a city of
| course.
| piperswe wrote:
| My grocery store is 3 miles (~5km) away with nearly zero
| sidewalks, and I live in the capital city of my state.
| America is a hellscape in that respect.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Counterpoint: my family in New Delhi regularly gets
| groceries (and booze and cigarettes and pet food)
| delivered. Convenience comes in many forms, and not
| everyone values the same elements similarly.
| cph123 wrote:
| Just for a bit of comparison... I'm in the UK and don't
| drive. It is a 10-min walk to a big Tesco superstore, which
| is really convenient. It is on my commute too (which I also
| walk, Uber if its raining heavily).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If people were legally allowed to live near grocery
| stores_
|
| My rural grocery store is 1.9 mi away. I tend to shop a few
| times a week, and only for what I need.
| GoatInGrey wrote:
| How many bags is "only for what I need" and how large is
| your household?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _How many bags is "only for what I need" and how large
| is your household?_
|
| Generally one bag, mostly produce. Maybe a meat I'll cook
| that day.
|
| House size ranges from one to five. The only time I wind
| up with a full fridge is around holidays or when I have
| houseguests with food anxiety.
| ponector wrote:
| That is a US thing. They even have a term for it: food
| desert.
|
| As European it's hard to imagine a place where you cannot
| walk to a grocery store.
| toephu2 wrote:
| Same with Asia.
| yabones wrote:
| It's not inherently an American thing, it's the result of
| several mid-century zoning and urban design decisions.
|
| I used to live in a 1920s era "streetcar suburb"
| neighbourhood. I lived on the third floor, and the ground
| level was a full (but small) grocery store. I never spent
| more than ~$50 at a time on groceries because I only bought
| for a couple days at a time.
|
| The same decisions and laws that created the current system
| can be changed to take us back to the "norm" in the rest of
| the world.
| asdff wrote:
| People have a lot of hyperbole about grocery store density.
| Pull up a random city and see how they are actually
| distributed. Even in flyover state metros grocery stores are
| basically evenly distributed 1-3 miles apart from the next
| across the entire urbanized/suburbanized area.
| standardUser wrote:
| In my California suburban hometown, half of the housing was
| in the hills and _any_ store, let alone a grocery store,
| was effectively unwalkable.
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| The solution is walkable towns/cities. Not deliveries hahaha.
| electriclove wrote:
| Sure, how has that worked over the past fifty years? Let's
| try deliveries now and see if that helps
| Zambyte wrote:
| Walkable cities have been working great since the dawn of
| cities. They continue to work fine where they are allowed
| to exist.
| crazygringo wrote:
| They've always been allowed to exist in the US.
|
| But the US also allows suburbs, and it turns out a ton of
| people prefer those, having backyards for their kids.
|
| I love cities but I'm also well aware that tons of people
| don't want to be stuck in cities.
| Zambyte wrote:
| Walkable cities are actually illegal in much of the US
| due to zoning laws right now. The reason you don't see
| shops in residential suburban developments is not because
| there is no demand, it's because it's literally illegal.
|
| Having walkable and bikeable destinations is compatible
| with back yards. It just needs to be legal to build it.
| ItsHarper wrote:
| It mostly hasn't worked in the US because cities mostly
| haven't been doing it. It seems to work great in other
| places.
| xnx wrote:
| A lot of problems are easy if you can get everyone to
| coordinate. Wishful thinking is not a plan though.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| You don't need to get everyone to coordinate. You need
| politicians to not listen to the lobby of home owners and
| real estate companies worried about their investments (in
| other words, ignore the NIMBYs). Change the zoning laws,
| incentivize developing mixed use, prioritize pedestrian
| and cycling infrastructure and stop prioritizing cars and
| parking.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Works completely perfectly in Japan.
| wenc wrote:
| Outside of big cities in Japan, car ownership is quite
| high (usually 2 cars per household).
| daedrdev wrote:
| I agree, but changing zoning is more difficult
| cm2012 wrote:
| Just rebuild society. Easy!
| cudgy wrote:
| "... but it's expensive due to the drivers."
|
| Really? Drivers only get paid 2 to 3 dollars per delivery from
| DoorDash and UberEats. These companies are predatory and pay
| the drivers less than it cost the drivers to deliver. So now
| these companies will assume all the costs instead of passing
| the cost down to the drivers? How does that make them more
| profitable? Maybe there's some DoorDash or Uber eaters here
| that can explain my confusion.
| trenchpilgrim wrote:
| Right, unless the drivers are using ebikes or scooters,
| they're paying more in vehicle maintenance and gas than
| they're making in fees.
| cudgy wrote:
| Don't forget depreciation of the vehicle and the risk of an
| accident as well.
|
| Why would DoorDash want to assume all that responsibility
| when they have such a good legal scam against all their
| drivers right now? I call it a scam because DoorDash claims
| to not be taking the tips of drivers, but given the puny
| payouts per delivery the drivers lose money and time
| without the tips, so how can they claim they're not taking
| the tips.
| boringg wrote:
| Grocery shopping done by task rabbits / etc leaves things to be
| desired. Quality of choices on things. Maybe its good for
| staples and saving you time there.
| bombcar wrote:
| Walmart will apparently delivery groceries to me _for free_
| under the right incantation. I don 't know how much advantage
| autonomy will add to that.
| spike021 wrote:
| Grocery delivery services are already ruining the regular
| supermarkets. My local grocery store used to always have fresh
| stock and full shelves. For the past year or two I've noticed a
| rapid increase in delivery shoppers who typically have 2-3 hand
| baskets or 2 full carts with them in aisles and clearing out
| shelves of food.
| crazygringo wrote:
| That doesn't make any sense.
|
| People aren't eating more food. Before they just had to go
| themselves.
|
| And supermarkets restock constantly throughout the day from
| the back.
| asdff wrote:
| Funny that you think the autonomous offerings pass the savings
| to the human customer.
| ge96 wrote:
| Wonder how the robots will fair, will they be discarded in rivers
| like e-scooters
|
| Assuming it's those little cooler-sized ones
|
| Damn it's an entire car for a package? hmm maybe they combine
| people and food (points to head)
|
| That'll be a new traveling salesman algorithm, the waymo doordash
| problem
| _verandaguy wrote:
| Love it.
|
| Create a market segment where everything costs more for everyone,
| "employ" countless people -- usually on restrictive work visas
| and with a limited understanding of labour laws, rights, and
| protections -- to be the boots on the ground of the operation,
| pay those people so little that they drive and ride dangerously
| in traffic, bike lanes, and on sidewalks to eke out more money
| out of the system, get people used to paying $40 for a burger,
| and then just... automate the whole thing away?
|
| This is an ethical no-win scenario for companies like Doordash in
| my mind, but it's one of their own making. Food delivery as a
| business catering to the general public needs to go away (with
| exceptions for meals on wheels-type operations serving the sick
| and the old who may otherwise not be able to get food on their
| own).
| leesec wrote:
| lol this is capitalism buddy. food delivery exists because
| people want it and pay for it, you actually don't get a say at
| all on if it needs to 'go away'.
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| > with a limited understanding of labour laws, rights, and
| protections
|
| Sweet summer child, they know very well what they're doing. The
| instances I've interacted with employees at those companies,
| they know exactly what kind of future they're building towards,
| and most of them seem very eager to get there, regardless of
| existing regulations.
|
| > Food delivery as a business catering to the general public
| needs to go away
|
| Why though? There is clearly demand for it in some way. We've
| been doing food delivery to the general public for decades, is
| it the amount of selection that you're against or food delivery
| as a whole?
|
| I agree that VC-funded startups that aim to basically crash
| industries because they're flush with cash, so they then can
| jack up prices should go away, but I don't see that linked with
| "Food Delivery" as a concept, we should be able to regulate one
| of them without getting rid of the other.
| inamberclad wrote:
| In house delivery has existed for a lot of business for a long
| time. For instance, nearly every pizza store would do delivery
| themselves. Many still do. However those services didn't
| introduce a middleman between you, the store, and the driver
| who extracted money from all 3.
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| And the pizza arrived hot because they had an insulated pizza
| carrier. The good old days.
| asdff wrote:
| And also pizza places were very fickle with where they'd
| deliver to preserve that level of service.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| When you operate a delivery service for your restaurant,
| there's A lot of overhead. You have to strike a balance
| between paying deliverers their wages, and timely service for
| your customers. If you mismatch your number of deliverers to
| the business you have for the day, then you're either
| throwing away money, or making your customers wait a very
| long time for their food, which also may have knock-on
| effects in the kitchen, if you don't want the food to be
| cold, you might need to wait to start preparing it until your
| delivery guy is on the way back from his route. Outsourcing
| delivery to a delivery company seems like a win from
| restaurants, which is probably why so many have signed up for
| it.
| asdff wrote:
| And yet despite all the supposed barriers the most hole in
| the wall pizza joints had decent delivery service.
| rajup wrote:
| Yeah this just reeks of 'old man yelling at cloud' with nothing
| practical or realistic
| mlinsey wrote:
| Problems with the current companies aside, asserting that we
| just shouldn't have general food delivery services at any price
| is strange. You could make the same argument against take-out
| too - anyone aside from the sick and the old is capable of
| cooking their own meals too, restaurant kitchen work is a
| notoriously poor work environment at low wages, etc...
| mythrwy wrote:
| I personally have never ordered food from any delivery service
| and only a few times a year from any restaurant at all, because
| I know how to cook and worse case, make a peanut butter
| sandwich.
|
| But if people are going to order food to go, is it better to
| have everyone driving to pick it up or better to have one
| driver picking up and delivering multiple orders at once?
|
| I mean, in a world of finite resources and pollution, which is
| better?
| trenchpilgrim wrote:
| People using these services know how to cook, they're usually
| trying to save time. Especially if they don't want to
| interrupt their work to ready a meal.
| mythrwy wrote:
| I don't know about other people, but I can cook almost as
| fast as dealing with a delivery service. Most meals I eat
| take about 15 minutes to make.
| trenchpilgrim wrote:
| You can pre-order lunch to arrive for your lunchtime
| meetings in about a minute in the app. Probably less
| convenient if you have an apartment, compared to a house,
| though.
| jamesnorden wrote:
| What do you mean 'costs more for everyone'? You're not forced
| to use any of it.
| poetril wrote:
| I live in a city that has had Waymo's (via Uber) for a while now
| and I have done a complete 180 on them. Not only are they usually
| cheaper than a traditional Uber, but they drive far more
| defensively, and don't come with the social baggage associated
| with a traditional Uber either (tipping, small talk).
| trenchpilgrim wrote:
| Many of my female friends have had bad experiences with ride
| share drivers, so I think there's a strong market demand.
| boringg wrote:
| Its funny because when ride sharing first came out --
| everyone had a great experience for the most part (early
| adopters/risk takers). Then the long tail (and VC growth
| money disappeared) came around and the pay got worse, job was
| a grind and the quality tanked.
|
| I don't doubt that we will have the same thing with all these
| new options. Maybe the social baggage won't be there but
| there will be weird new things that pop up...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the long tail (and VC growth money disappeared) came
| around and the pay got worse, job was a grind and the
| quality tanked_
|
| As well as the prices, wait times and ubiquity.
|
| I'm not saying it's a panacea. But I don't think most
| people want to go back to when Uber was only black cars.
| asdff wrote:
| When it first came out you didn't have people working it
| full time. It would be like dads making side money after
| the kid was put to bed.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| > Not only are they usually cheaper than a traditional Uber
|
| Enjoy it while it lasts. Uber/Lyft were far cheaper than other
| options when they launched until they put everything else out
| of business, then jacked up the price.
| poetril wrote:
| That's been my attitude as well. I'm not convinced they'll
| stay cheaper for long, and when I say "cheaper" its marginal.
| Cost of the ride is the similar, but it seems there is no tip
| built into the price yet.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Uber /Lyft were far cheaper than other options when they
| launched until they put everything else out of business, then
| jacked up the price_
|
| Source? Particularly inflation adjusted? Uber, specifically,
| started out as black cars only.
| asdff wrote:
| Rides were like $4-7. A ride over $10 was rare.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I took a ride home two nights ago for under $7. On the
| other hand, I tend to avoid Ubers in New York (versus
| taxis), but that's one part local demand and one part
| local regulation.
| seneca wrote:
| Interesting trade-offs for a customer. No more expectation to tip
| or dealing with drivers potentially running scams. On the other
| side, I assume you now need to go unload the delivery from the
| car yourself, a much worse experience for apartment dwellers or
| the disabled.
|
| Either way, we're going to see a lot more of this. More and more
| of the gig economy being automated away.
| superkuh wrote:
| Not surprised. Phoenix is one of those rare and contrived
| physical locations that doesn't get weather or seasons. No snow,
| little rain. The road surface and road edges are always visible
| and never change. People always stay in the clearly visible
| lanes. It's the perfect place to field semi-autonomous vehicles
| that can't hack it in normal regions so it looks like they're
| more capable than they are.
|
| If Waymo were launching in Minneapolis I'd be surprised and
| delighted. But this is just more of the same.
| fullshark wrote:
| This post seems to imply this is a trick or false progress. Why
| not start where it's feasible/easier as you prove the business
| model and work out unforeseen issues?
| superkuh wrote:
| Because they've been doing it SF and Phoenix over and over
| for the last decade with no progress while saying they were
| fully autonomous. I guess it's not so much about the
| companies but the technology itself not actually being
| capable yet. So they stick to the cheat regions rather than
| attempting to actually make autonomous vehicles (because
| that's too difficult, they'd have crash/failures making
| news).
|
| Your argument would definitely apply in 2015. Not so much in
| 2025.
| fullshark wrote:
| This is about a business / vertical launch more so than an
| autonomous driving breakthrough.
| superkuh wrote:
| Ah, yeah, but from that point of view it's not much of a
| news story and one wonders why anyone cares?
| trenchpilgrim wrote:
| No progress? They started doing rides from SFO into the Bay
| Area this year.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _they 've been doing it SF and Phoenix over and over for
| the last decade with no progress_
|
| When were you last in a Waymo? I use them almost
| exclusively in Phoenix.
|
| > _they stick to the cheat regions_
|
| Do you think it doesn't snow in Atlanta?
| superkuh wrote:
| I think that you don't understand snow (real winter) and
| how it effects vehicles. A dusting of snow that stays on
| the ground for a day before melting is not an issue. The
| issue is when the snow keeps the road markings covered
| for literally weeks or months at a time. When the lanes
| are not visible to human drivers and they form new
| flocking based emergent lanes which all humans follow
| instead of the actual lanes. When the snow piles on the
| edge of the road change the width from week to week and
| force parked cars out into the middle of the old lane.
|
| Snow is not a problem. Snow that stays is a problem.
| Atlanta doesn't get snow that stays. Waymo is noticbly
| absent from Buffalo after their one prior attempt.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _you don 't understand snow and how it effects
| vehicles_
|
| Tell me more about how the 92" of snow my town got last
| winter leaves me ignorant.
|
| > _Snow is not a problem. Snow that stays is a problem_
|
| Snow used to be a problem! It isn't anymore because it's
| solved. My Subaru can keep lane using radar alone,
| following the car in front of me, in a blizzard.
|
| > _Waymo is noticbly absent from Buffalo after their one
| prior attempt_
|
| They're also noticeably absent from Chula Vista [1].
|
| Also, I know I don't understand snow, but maybe the folks
| in Denver do [2].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_c
| ities_b...
|
| [2] https://denverite.com/2025/09/02/denver-waymo-pilot-
| project-...
| btmiller wrote:
| Hey, which town do you live in? I want to know where I
| should be steering clear of Subarus in the winter ;)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _want to know where I should be steering clear of
| Subarus in the winter ;)_
|
| We're actually pretty good! The fuckwits are in the FWD
| rental cars that can't brake, ever, and souped-up
| F-million fifties driven by rich 17-year olds who
| predictably flip them on flat straightaways despite
| infinite farmland run-off, at grade, on both sides.
|
| And to be clear, I'm never leaving the Subaru alone. The
| Subaru isn't letting me leave it alone. But the notion
| that Waymo couldn't figure out snowstorms is one I'll
| readily challenge given the Subaru's radar frequently
| sees white cars in a white out before I make them out
| visually (at 15 mph with hazards on). In the snow, an
| autonomous vehicle's radar (note: not lidar and certainly
| not cameras) have an advantage over humans.
| standardUser wrote:
| It may just be that robo-taxis don't operate in snowy
| conditions for a while and those regions have to wait for
| year-round service.
| xnx wrote:
| > doesn't get weather or seasons
|
| Phoenix just broke rainfall records two days in a row and
| regularly gets dust storms. Those are both challenging
| conditions for drivers.
| asdff wrote:
| And waymo suspended service during that.
| asdff wrote:
| They have them in LA but they geolocked all the
| hilly/narrow/challenging areas from the system.
| Natsu wrote:
| [delayed]
| Reubend wrote:
| I really want to see how they figure out the actual delivery of
| the food.
|
| Obviously the cars can drive themselves on public streets, but
| how do you go up to someone's house and put a burger on their
| doorstep?
| codyklimdev wrote:
| I have to assume rather than solving that problem the car will
| park on the curb and people will be expected to walk down and
| get it
| cudgy wrote:
| People will love that when it's raining or in snow. What
| about in cities where you can't even find parking? Or you
| live on the 30th floor of an apartment complex? Lol these
| companies are so stupid.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What about in cities where you can't even find parking?
| Or you live on the 30th floor of an apartment complex? Lol
| these companies are so stupid_
|
| Do you think these drivers currently run around with two to
| a car, one to keep the engine running while they go around
| the block while the other goes upstairs?
| cudgy wrote:
| Huh? Why would I think that? My comment is regarding the
| customer. With an automated delivery the customer
| receives the goods at the location where the delivery
| vehicle can park near the destination. Without automated
| delivery, the human receives the goods at their front
| door.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Without automated delivery, the human receives the
| goods at their front door_
|
| Fair enough. Not really an issue in Phoenix. Plenty of
| buildings (in San Francisco and Atlanta, to memory)
| require delivery to be dropped off at a centralized
| location. And there aren't many high rises, or months of
| monsoon, in Phoenix.
| cudgy wrote:
| Phoenix would be a city where this will be less of an
| issue for sure, but you still have two and three story
| apartment buildings that require customers to go
| downstairs for their food.
|
| Having to go outside significantly reduces the benefit of
| delivery. Now customers have to interrupt what they're
| doing, make sure they look OK so the neighbors don't see
| their underwear and bed hair, put on a jacket or raincoat
| in bad weather, possibly wait on 2 elevators, and pick up
| their food right next to their own car in the parking
| lot. In some cases, this could take five minutes.
| Customer realizes that they could just get in their car
| and drive to the restaurant at this point, so why order
| for delivery?
|
| Makes no sense.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _In some cases, this could take five minutes. Customer
| realizes that they could just get in their car and drive
| to the restaurant at this point, so why order for
| delivery?_
|
| What? They'd stumble down in pyjamas. If they're in a
| building that probably means exiting and re-entering a
| parking garage. Also, it's Phoenix. Nothing is five
| minutes away--the urban plan is one of sprawl.
|
| I agree it's less convenient than door delivery. But
| against that is the cost of tipping and humans getting
| lost. For it is the fact that in many major cities,
| people routinely order food delivery despite being
| required by building policy to pick it up downstairs.
| cudgy wrote:
| I think we've exhausted this discussion. It's reduced
| down to simple individual opinions about whether it's
| worth it to drive to a restaurant or not.
|
| I only wanted to point out that The customers are getting
| less not more. And the companies will make less money
| because the automated cars are more expensive than
| drivers that are willing to take food for 2 to 3 dollars
| a delivery. If you fail to see that or recognize it, I'll
| leave it at that.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _customers are getting less not more_
|
| I think plenty of Phoenicians will tip themselves to walk
| to the curb.
|
| > _the companies will make less money because the
| automated cars are more expensive than drivers_
|
| Disagree. The marginal cost for a late-night Waymo is
| probably already comparable to that of a driver, and
| that's before we get to California's Prop 22.
| poppingpop wrote:
| When I order food delivery I try to limit myself to
| locations nearby because I don't want to be a hassle and
| make a driver drive 10 miles out and 10 miles in. I also
| factor in a tip for the delivery itself.
|
| If it's a robot delivering to me I don't care if I make
| the robot drive 30 miles out to get me food (as long as
| the food is something that won't taste notably worse
| after such a long drive of course). Plus I'm not going to
| tip the machine.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > but you still have two and three story apartment
| buildings that require customers to go downstairs for
| their food.
|
| Everyone keeps ignoring you on this part, but they aren't
| thinking about people with disabilities or mobility
| issues that rely on delivery services to get their
| groceries because alternative or public welfare programs
| don't exist for this.
|
| What happens when DoorDash, UberEats, Instacart, etc. all
| go autonomous? People with disabilities get screwed in
| the name of profit. They are already getting screwed with
| higher prices as is.
|
| These customers can't simply "go downstairs and meet the
| car" the point of delivery specifically in this case is
| to have it brought right to your door. Automated cars
| miss this usecase entirely.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What happens when DoorDash, UberEats, Instacart, etc.
| all go autonomous? People with disabilities get screwed_
|
| They get special accommodation. Food delivery via
| rideshare didn't exist 20 years ago...
| infecto wrote:
| You clearly have never used these services or are out of
| touch. Having a human deliver kind of sucks, lots of risk
| of tampering with food and it's overall a terrible
| experience especially for women.
|
| This is a brilliant fix, for the case of folks wanting it
| physically delivered, I am sure you can or will be able to
| pay for that.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Yeah the article is extremely light on details. It basically
| just announced a partnership and not any of the specifics.
| McNulty2 wrote:
| Well they did mention one specific, and that is the fact that
| this service is only for DashMart orders i.e. the first part
| of any autonomous delivery order is at a DoorDash -controlled
| and -staffed facility. Where they can babysit the process.
|
| To me that pickup part seems almost more difficult than the
| delivery end of the journey. If you think about a busy
| restaurant with app-delivery orders piling up on the counter,
| how is that order going to get into the autonomous vehicle
| outside or down the road? Maybe a new service will spring up
| called mini-Dash where a human has a job running the orders
| down to the waiting vehicles?
| toephu2 wrote:
| It won't. You're supposed to open the car door and grab your
| food.
| inerte wrote:
| From https://waymo.com/blog/2025/10/your-doordash-order-
| delivered...
|
| "When Waymo arrives, open the trunk with your DoorDash app and
| grab your items."
| themafia wrote:
| Sweet. Now I can turn unsuspecting Waymo cars into drug
| delivery vehicles. It's the perfect cover.
| mbesto wrote:
| It also implies that the restaurant has to walk out to the
| car and place it in the car too. They aint gonna like that.
| Although to be fair most restaurants already hate the drivers
| that physically come into their restaurants and don't obey
| the rules.
| tylergetsay wrote:
| DoorDash appears very inexpensive when you have their DashPass
| product, however ive notice that basically every food service
| business will raise their menu prices, and grocery stores will
| restrict which items that allow you to buy.
|
| This is really interesting because if you have autonmous drivers,
| DoorDash doesnt really have a lever to lower prices except
| removing tipping.
| ripply wrote:
| It appears inexpensive because raising prices is the only
| visibility you have into what the restaurant is paying these
| services for their order flows (~10-30%).
| darth_aardvark wrote:
| The restaurant doesn't choose the prices DoorDash displays,
| DoorDash does.
| 5555624 wrote:
| Are you sure about that? I thought the restaurant does. On
| DoorDash's Help page
| (https://help.doordash.com/merchants/s/article/How-to-
| Maximiz...) There's a quote: "To provide a high-quality
| experience for all of our customers, we set prices on
| DoorDash the same as our in-store prices. DoorDash even
| enables operators to set different pricing for delivery and
| pickup, but a core part of us providing high-quality
| customer service is accomplished through our consistent
| menu pricing." - Manuel Bucio, Owner, Razpachos" That seems
| to indicate the restaurant sets the prices.
| paxys wrote:
| You really think Doordash sets individual prices for each
| dish for the half million restaurants that it lists on its
| service? It is a simple platform. The restaurant sets up
| and manages its own menu, and Doordash takes a cut of the
| final sale.
| parhamn wrote:
| I'm surprised that's not illegal, and I think states will pass
| laws to fix this.
|
| In my area, an &Pizza is $12 on their App, $19 on Doordash
| (delivery or pickup). A Chipotle burrito is $9.50 vs $12.35 on
| doordash delivery (plus every addon is a $1 more expensive).
|
| You can easily pay an extra $4/$5 (30%) per item you order on
| there.
| infecto wrote:
| Why should it be illegal? Makes no sense to me. As long as
| the business is not discriminating based on class it should
| be ok.
| jchw wrote:
| What I personally dislike about this is that it hides the
| cost of Doordash. It's not intuitive that the prices of
| items is silently higher on Doordash: it's not like online
| retailers having different prices for the same SKU, it's
| _the same restaurant_. I 'd prefer the overhead to show up
| as its own line item, rather than obscuring the actual cost
| of the service. I have a feeling less people would choose
| to Doordash as often if they realized just how much more
| things cost through it. (Not everyone, but, there are a lot
| people who really do just do it for convenience, and they
| could just drive and go pick up their own takeout.)
| chronci739 wrote:
| > I'd prefer the overhead to show up as its own line
| item, rather than obscuring the actual cost of the
| service.
|
| While that's what you prefer, the market (most other
| users, including whale spenders) doesn't care to know the
| actual cost.
| jchw wrote:
| Without regulation, "the market" wouldn't care about a
| lot of things. It's actually a good thing that a small
| minority of people hold the line for people who don't
| have time to care about issues like this kind of
| manipulation!
| bitdivision wrote:
| I don't think that's true, however doordash surely know
| that some users might think twice if they saw that number
| separated out.
| jimbokun wrote:
| No.
|
| That is what large corporations want and in the US
| especially they are the ones that write the laws.
| tredre3 wrote:
| > it's not like online retailers having different prices
| for the same SKU, it's the same restaurant
|
| But those online retailers are supplied by the same
| distributor who is supplied by the same manufacturer.
| - ManufacturerA -> (Amazon|Walmart) -> Customer -
| RestaurantA -> (Pickup|Doordash|Uber) -> Customer
|
| Isn't it exactly the same? Online retailers add their
| cost and profit requirements in their pricing, Doordash
| does the same.
|
| > I'd prefer the overhead to show up as its own line
| item, rather than obscuring the actual cost of the
| service.
|
| Me too. Especially that they already ALSO add a service
| fee in many (most?) locales, in addition to the delivery
| fee and the tip. - Item priced 30%
| higher - Delivery fee - Service fee
| - Tip
|
| The first three should be folded in a single line item so
| that customers realize how much price gouging Doordash is
| really doing.
| jchw wrote:
| You have a point, but I just think it's less intuitive
| for consumers. Manufacturers often don't even do direct
| sales, so the only "canonical" price is the MSRP, which
| is just that, a suggestion. Consumers go shopping at
| Walmart or Amazon, they don't go "shopping" at Doordash:
| the menu they're seeing on Doordash _is_ the restaurant
| menu. In some cases, it is the only online menu that some
| restaurants even have. To me it is not terribly intuitive
| that these prices differ.
|
| There is another analog for this, too, though: some
| retailers indeed would have more or less expensive prices
| for the same thing when ordering online versus in-store.
| I think the argument that it isn't unprecedented is
| pretty solid.
|
| Despite not being entirely unprecedented, I'd still
| prefer to see this practice ended for food delivery
| services so it is easier to see the actual true overhead
| of food delivery services. It really does feel a bit
| manipulative the way it is right now.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I'm pretty sure DoorDash is the one who increases the price
| on their end, not the business. And what's more, they don't
| separate the addition out. It's rolled in to the cost of
| the item.
|
| I'd be very curious what the conversation is between them.
| I highly doubt DoorDash negotiates with every restaurant on
| their platform and wouldn't be surprised to discover they
| just tack it on independently. I could see that raising
| some interesting questions.
|
| All of this is predicated on "ifs" and assumptions, so feel
| free to throw it out. Just kind of musing here lol
| tredre3 wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure DoorDash is the one who increases the
| price on their end, not the business
|
| That is not correct. Doordash takes a 20-30% commission
| on each sale, so businesses preemptively increase the
| prices to offset that. They're not forced to and doordash
| isn't doing it for them. But, you know, they're still
| effectively "forced" to if their in-store prices don't
| have great margins to begin with...
| objektif wrote:
| Correct it is advised by DD but eventually done by the
| merchant.
| mbesto wrote:
| And they basically have no choice but to increase the
| price. Their margins are already razor thin.
| objektif wrote:
| Of course they do not. I still can't believe that so
| called marketing that DD and Uber does commands a 30% rev
| share.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Ah my mistake then!
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Why would it be illegal? If you think of it as Doordash
| buying the pizza and then reselling it to you, there'd be no
| reason not to expect a mark up. You're allowed to price
| discriminate between different market segments, so even if we
| pitch Doordash as merely a third party delivery offering,
| restaurants could still charge Doordash customers more than
| those that come into their storefront.
| mrcwinn wrote:
| I don't know that it should be illegal. I think the
| argument would be that it's deceptive. DoorDash, for some
| customers, claims there is no service fee - it's "free."
| What they're really saying is: the service of our delivery
| may be free, but the overall service we will provide is
| hidden or obfuscated in menu items, and without doing some
| research at the restaurant, you'll likely not notice.
|
| One could argue it's best for the consumer to very clearly
| understand how much more they're paying. If not a service
| fee, here is our aggregate food markup, in plain sight.
| Transparency, in other words. Let's not borrow any ideas
| from the healthcare system.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > If you think of it as Doordash buying the pizza and then
| reselling it to you
|
| Isn't this basically impossible to do legally in the U.S.?
| Wouldn't you run into trouble both with IP law and food
| safety laws around reselling prepared foods?
| masfuerte wrote:
| This has been happening for a good while. There are loads
| of instances of food delivery companies creating
| unauthorized websites for restaurants with a phone number
| and url owned by the delivery company. They are literally
| buying the food and reselling it to you at a markup.
|
| If it's illegal nobody cares.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| IP law, no, for the same reason nothing stops me from
| reselling the Ralph Lauren shirt I bought as a Ralph
| Lauren shirt, so long as I make no pretenses of _being_
| Ralph Lauren, and I make no modifications to it. The good
| is the same, IP protected good. I 'm just re-selling it.
|
| Food safety? There might be some restrictions related to
| food handling, but to my understanding they're mostly
| pretty rote food handling safety training stuff that I'd
| hope delivery companies provide anyway.
| AlexAplin wrote:
| This exact arbitrage, performed by Doordash, was
| exploited.
|
| https://www.readmargins.com/p/doordash-and-pizza-
| arbitrage
| ibejoeb wrote:
| If you're in a jurisdiction that taxes prepare food, then
| the government is going to be unhappy about missing the
| tax on the second sale.
| mjamesaustin wrote:
| It should be illegal because these services market a
| subscription to you claiming the benefit of zero fees and
| free delivery, which is a lie. You are being secretly
| charged through a higher menu price, none of which is shown
| to you as a customer.
|
| I can't count how many friends I have had to explain this
| to who don't understand they are paying 20-30% more even
| after getting "free delivery" than if they just ordered
| directly through the restaurant.
| udkl wrote:
| so like, Amazon Prime?
| joshstrange wrote:
| Also, Doordash does not have "zero fees" for orders when
| you pay for DashPass, they have "reduced" fees. I do
| absolutely hate the practice of "Taxes & Fees" being a
| line item and only when you click into it do you see that
| the taxes are minimal and most of that is the platform
| fees.
|
| I'm not sure how UberEats/etc handle it but it's
| absolutely crazy how much of a markup there is to order
| through Doordash vs going to pick it up when you factor
| in Restaurant Upcharge + Doordash Fees + Tip. It's easy
| to have an $8 item suddenly cost $20 or more total out-
| of-pocket when all is said and done.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Instead of being illegal, we should just have price
| transparency. Require companies to show the markup directly
| in the app.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Doordash and other companies like it take a good chunk of the
| margins of those stores for the privilege of delivering the
| items. 15% is not unheard of.
| objektif wrote:
| More like 25%+.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think most reasonable would be to mandate that these food
| delivery services can not take cut from payment going to
| restaurants, but instead must charge it fully to customer. So
| restaurant has menu price of 10 and when someone orders
| delivery from payment 10 goes to restaurant. And delivery
| service is free to add their margin on top be it 30 or 50%.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| Doordash itself appears to add at least $1 to all menu items.
| Which is horrible for certain restaurants that do a la carte.
| Eg. My local indian place ends up with doubled/tripled prices
| on Doordash.
|
| Eg. Papad = $0.49 each directly from my local Indian
| restaurants site (they sell by the single), Doordash gives a
| price of $1.50 per papad.
|
| Likewise with Naans, dips, etc. All have $1 added. Which can
| make a $10 lunch ~ $25.
|
| I believe it's Doordash doing this. What gets really weird is
| Uber Eats and Grubhub seem to match prices and charge exactly
| the same as Doordash.
|
| For anyone to repeat this. Look up your local indian places
| actual menu. You'll likely need to use Google images for the
| name of the restaurant to find an actual picture of a physical
| menu. Now look up any of the online services, they all seem to
| price match each other and they'll all have doubled prices for
| things like naan or roti.
| hypeatei wrote:
| > I believe it's Doordash doing this
|
| Restaurants set the menu prices higher on delivery platforms
| to recoup the money lost in fees. They also pay fees to
| DoorDash, Uber, etc...
| walterbell wrote:
| _> Uber Eats and Grubhub seem to match prices and charge
| exactly the same as Doordash._
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-
| guidance/gui... Price fixing is an agreement
| (written, verbal, or inferred from conduct) among competitors
| to raise, lower, maintain, or stabilize prices or price
| levels. Generally, the antitrust laws require that each
| company establish prices and other competitive terms on its
| own, without agreeing with a competitor. When
| purchasers make choices about what products and services to
| buy, they expect that the price has been determined on the
| basis of supply and demand, not by an agreement among
| competitors. When competitors agree to restrict competition,
| the result is often higher prices.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Unfortunately, you're not gonna successfully nail a BigCo
| with a legal team using an "inferred from conduct" clause.
| That's the kind of thing your municipal or state enforcers
| use to threaten a peasant into settling.
| walterbell wrote:
| How about algorithmic collusion?
| https://consumerlaw.berkeley.edu/news/california-slams-
| door-...
| joshstrange wrote:
| I work for a POS company, I can assure you it's the
| restaurants doing this. They often have different menus with
| different prices for UberEats/Doordash/etc. One abstraction
| company I've worked with (You push your menu to them and they
| push it out to multiple providers then route the orders back
| to you), even provides tools to be able to increase all your
| menu items by a set % rounding to the nearest 5/10/25-cents.
|
| The UberEats/Doordashes/etc of the world all charge pretty
| high fees so this is one way the restaurants can recoup some
| of that.
|
| Also, I spend way too much time pricing out Doordash vs
| Official App (normally using Doordash for delivery) vs Pickup
| just to see what the spread is.
| robotnikman wrote:
| Just curious, is the company NCR?
| joshstrange wrote:
| Nope, I work for Touchpoint https://www.touchpoint.io/
| mbesto wrote:
| > I can assure you it's the restaurants doing this.
|
| > The UberEats/Doordashes/etc of the world all charge
| pretty high fees so this is one way the restaurants can
| recoup some of that.
|
| Are you blaming the restaurants or the ride share services?
| I can't tell...
| joshstrange wrote:
| I'm not "blaming" anyone really. I don't fault the
| restaurants for raising prices to cover the costs. I
| don't love how opaque the whole thing is but I understand
| both sides.
|
| It's all a shell games so that they can say "free
| delivery" and/or not have to call out "this item is $5
| but you will pay a 20% more to get it delivered through
| DoorDash". They just hide that "fee" in the item price.
| Antoniocl wrote:
| My read of the comment wasn't that he was "blaming"
| either, but explaining where the fees come from.
|
| It sounds like the direct increase to the consumer's
| prices is done by the restaurant itself, but the _reason_
| the restaurant is charging higher prices are to make up
| for the fees they 're charged by UE/DD.
|
| In other words, UE/DD restaurant-side service fees eat
| into the restaurant's profit margins, so the restaurant
| passes on the cost increases to the consumer to get them
| back.
|
| To be clear, no idea about how closely these statements
| correspond to the world, just that this seems to be OP's
| claim.
| mythrwy wrote:
| The next step is to build little robot kitchens in the vehicles
| and drive around preparing what people order en route. (kidding.
| maybe).
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| That was the original business model of Zume Pizza. Didn't work
| out because the acceleration in turns caused melted cheese to
| fly off the pizzas, among other issues.
| fainpul wrote:
| Done
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjyJRTM0knE
| sh1mmer wrote:
| It would be interesting to see if this could be combined with
| those little sidewalk bots to do the last mile, effectively
| having the Waymos act like buses for the bots.
| bombcar wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhxPO-dUanI
| asdff wrote:
| Those things need a last 100ft microbot
| sureglymop wrote:
| Disclaimer: European position incoming.
|
| Food delivery is something I truly have never understood. I have
| very rarely been in a situation where I was thinking about food
| and couldn't think of any nearby restaurants within walking
| distance (~30 minutes on foot). Why would I order if I could just
| walk, which is also more healthy anyway? Even if I was extremely
| busy, if I have time to eat I also have the time to get the food.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Food delivery is something I truly have never understood_
|
| Cool? I've never quite gotten bumblebees.
|
| Meanwhile, they continue to fly and apparently burrow. And
| Europeans buy tens of billions of dollars of food delivery
| services [1].
|
| [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/europe-online-food-
| delivery-m...
| bb123 wrote:
| Ok? So you've never lived anywhere that isn't relatively
| central and walkable. Many people do (even in Europe!). I am
| one of them. And on a night when I am working late being able
| to order a hot pizza to my front door is a godsend.
| bombcar wrote:
| Every single person (including me) who sees no value in
| DoorUberDashing food around agrees that Domino's Pizza has
| it's place in society.
| themafia wrote:
| Prior to DoorDash I had zero obstacles to getting a fresh
| pizza delivered.
| paxys wrote:
| So you do understand food delivery. Is it a stretch then to
| imagine why a service that expands the delivery market from
| a handful of pizza and chinese restaurants to ~every
| restaurant in the city (that wants to opt in without hiring
| its own fleet of drivers) is successful?
| themafia wrote:
| Yes. The quality of a delivered pizza is higher than the
| quality of other delivered foods relative to the quality
| of getting them for dine in at the restaurant.
|
| Do /you/ understand food delivery?
| standardUser wrote:
| > if I have time to eat I also have the time to get the food.
|
| Absolutely untrue.
| lossolo wrote:
| Autonomous delivery by vehicles works pretty well in China
| already, it should work in the US too.
| xnx wrote:
| This is a great step in increasing the utilization of Waymo
| vehicles. Ideally Waymo's would be operating continuously doing
| useful work and reducing the number of dead-head legs.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Pull in to the Waymo after work, eat someone's dinner while
| you're stuck in traffic.. I like it
| McNulty2 wrote:
| What a wonderful way to discover new cuisines!
| Footnote7341 wrote:
| We're still moving thousands of pounds of vehicle around a public
| highway to carry a 1lb burrito, obviously lightweight aerial
| drones are the future for food and grocery delivery.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Mark Rober showed a version that was very quiet. Somebody
| figured out how to make a different propeller design that
| greatly minimized the noise. I'm interested to see if this
| could actually be feasible and make for very quiet services.
| ponector wrote:
| If it is feasible, we'll see such propellers on FPV kamikaze
| drone first.
| gpm wrote:
| FPV missiles have little interest in keeping the area
| around them a pleasant environment to live in, and are
| disposable one time use items. I suspect drone delivery
| places a higher premium on lowering noise pollution.
| walterbell wrote:
| _> little interest in keeping the area around them a
| pleasant environment to live in_
|
| Some interest in reducing evasive maneuvers or counter-
| attacks triggered by noise.
| incognito124 wrote:
| You mean the toroidal propellers?
| dataflow wrote:
| It takes more energy to stay in the air, so I imagine it
| depends what weight and distance you're carrying.
| spankalee wrote:
| Unless you're cooking at home, you'd still move thousands of
| pounds of vehicle to drive to the restaurant, so I'm not sure
| that food delivery is really any worse.
|
| It could be a lot better if multiple deliveries are handled per
| trip.
| ajkjk wrote:
| best case scenario is walkable neighborhoods with lots of
| little tasty restaurants at affordable prices around the
| corner from everybody.
|
| We've got a long way to go on actually building out our own
| country in a desirable way.
| zonotope wrote:
| This is the correct answer. There are a few pockets in the
| USA where this is the case like parts of the Boston and New
| York metro area, but you have be flexible with your
| definition of "affordable".
|
| And that's the point. These places are less than affordable
| because there's a much higher demand of people who want to
| live in these kinds of areas than the supply of them. We
| should build more!
| sp4cec0wb0y wrote:
| Nice to see someone here with their head on straight.
| spankalee wrote:
| Yes, and I completely agree with this, but the comparison
| for this type of food delivery should be apples-to-apples.
|
| If you live in a very walkable place, you're less likely to
| use delivery and when you do it's more likely to be someone
| on a bike or scooter. Waymo's probably don't apply there.
| The comparison would be walking vs delivery, and that would
| obviously come out bad for delivery.
|
| If you don't live in a walkable place then the comparison
| is you driving vs the delivery driving, and that's a wash
| or even positive for delivery. The induced demand of
| delivery vs cooking at home (assuming you grocery shop for
| the week) would be very bad for delivery though.
| austhrow743 wrote:
| >If you live in a very walkable place, you're less likely
| to use delivery
|
| This makes sense as a theory but it doesn't match my
| observed reality at all. Everyone I know who frequently
| orders food on delivery apps live in dense, walkable
| cities.
| realityfactchex wrote:
| > best case scenario is walkable neighborhoods with lots of
| little tasty restaurants at affordable prices around the
| corner from everybody.
|
| According to the written history, pre-1906 San Francisco
| had basically that.
|
| It seems that the normal middle-class could afford high-
| quality, delicious food at restaurants, multiple times per
| week, due to the abundance of local ingredients and overall
| economic conditions.
|
| So, how to get that quality and relative pricing today?
|
| Excerpts from "The City That Was: A Requiem of Old San
| Francisco" by Will Irwin (free eBook, [0], free audiobook
| [1], HTML version at [2]): > San Francisco
| was famous for its restaurants and cafes. > they
| gave the best fare on earth, for the price, at a dollar,
| seventy-five cents, a half a dollar, or even fifteen cents.
| > a public restaurant where there was served the best
| dollar dinner on earth > The eating was usually
| better than the surroundings. Meals that were marvels were
| served in tumbledown little hotels. > A number
| of causes contributed to this. The country all about
| produced everything that a cook needs and that in abundance
| --the bay was an almost untapped fishing pound, the fruit
| farms came up to the very edge of the town, and the
| surrounding country produced in abundance fine meats, game,
| all cereals and all vegetables. [0]
| https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3314 [1]
| https://librivox.org/san-francisco-before-and-after-the-
| earthquake-by-william-henry-irwin/ [2] https://www.gu
| tenberg.org/cache/epub/3314/pg3314-images.html
| crooked-v wrote:
| A starting point would be actually having enough housing,
| so workers don't automatically need wages that can absorb
| the overhead of commuting an hour both ways just to make
| burgers.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Adjusted for income, those prices would be $15-$100
| today. That seems in the right ballpark to me. I can get
| a pretty great dinner for $100/plate, especially if I
| don't need it to be in a fancy restaurant atmosphere.
| realityfactchex wrote:
| Not really, though?
|
| That's what I thought at first, after trying one
| inflation calculator: $30 for a decent meal, sure, and
| double that maybe for a pretty tasty meal, is pretty
| available. (Even then, I think ingredient purity and true
| preparation aptitude could be pretty suspect, especially
| at the lower end.)
|
| BUT, TRYING AGAIN: Some inflation calculators do not go
| back to 1900. But looking further, $0.15 to $1.00 in 1900
| would be $5.67 to $38.57 in 2025 dollars, according to
| https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/
|
| I do wonder if there are discontinuities in inflation
| calculators for the times before the great fires in each
| city. Setting that aside, and assuming https://www.in2013
| dollars.com/us/inflation/1900?amount=0.15 is accurate, 15
| cents in 1900 would be $5.64 in 2025 AFAICT at the
| moment.
|
| It would be very hard to find a decent sandwich for $5.67
| just about anywhere in the USA, much less a multi-course,
| local, fresh, gourmet meal.
|
| I think it's the general availability of these kinds of
| pure foods, and their accessibility all about town,
| prepared to near perfection, even accessible to the poor,
| that stands out in the Old San Francisco description. To
| wit: > ...Hotel de France. This
| restaurant stood on California street...a big ramshackle
| house, which had been a mansion of the gold days. Louis,
| the proprietor, was a Frenchman...his accent was as thick
| as his peasant soups. The patrons were Frenchmen of the
| poorer class, or young and poor clerks and journalists
| who had discovered the delights... > First
| ...was the soup mentioned before--thick and clean and
| good. Next, ...a course of fish--sole, rock cod,
| flounders or smelt--with a good French sauce. The third
| course was meat. This came on en bloc; the waiter dropped
| in the centre of each table a big roast or boiled joint
| together with a mustard pot and two big dishes of
| vegetables. Each guest manned the carving knife in turn
| and helped himself to his satisfaction. After that, ...a
| big bowl of excellent salad.... For beverage, there stood
| by each plate a perfectly cylindrical pint glass filled
| with new, watered claret. The meal closed with "fruit in
| season"--all that the guest cared to eat....the price was
| fifteen cents! > If one wanted black coffee he
| paid five cents extra...a beer glass full of it. ...he
| threw in wine and charged extra for after-dinner
| coffee... > Adulterated food at that price?
| Not a bit of it! The olive oil in the salad was pure,
| California product--why adulterate when he could get it
| so cheaply? The wine, too, was above reproach.... Every
| autumn, he brought tons and tons of cheap Mission grapes,
| ...The fruit was small, and inferior, but fresh...wished
| his guests would eat nothing but fruit, it came so
| cheap...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I used census data to come up with my guesstimate [0]. In
| 1905, the largest share of men were making $10-15 per
| week. Women and children less, of course.
|
| The 2025 equivalent seems to be about $1330 per week. So
| in [very] round numbers it looks like about 100x.
|
| [0] https://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/034
| 21399v4...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I find it usually more helpful to look at median wages
| instead of inflation numbers. Inflation looks at many
| goods and adjusted in many strange ways.
|
| It looks like a normal salary for a Baker in 1900 was
| $2/day for a 13 hour day, or $0.15/hour[1]. a $1 meal
| would be about 6 hours of work in 1900.
|
| Today, the median SF income is 100k, or $50/hr. 6 hours
| buys you a $300 meal.
|
| Taxes are a whole different story you dont want me to
| start on. In 1900, state, local, and federal taxes were
| about 7% of GDP. Today they are >30%.
|
| https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.li1gx2&seq=263
|
| Anecdotally, this is consistent with what I have
| personally observed in dozens of countries, where the low
| end cost of eating out is about the same as and hour of
| work.
| realityfactchex wrote:
| Thanks, both
| criddell wrote:
| Walking doesn't make sense in some cities and it's only
| getting worse. In Phoenix you risk sun stroke just running
| from your house to the car.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Phoenix as a city doesn't make sense. It's entire
| existence is due to Arizona getting _wayyyy_ too much in
| the way of water rights for the amount of economic
| activity that should be happening in it.
| coredog64 wrote:
| Getting onto my hobby horse:
|
| The Pima and Maricopa tribes were able to create massive
| agricultural surpluses from pre-Columbian times to the
| early 19th century thanks to the Salt River. Phoenix is
| not a rainforest, but it's also not a bone-dry location.
|
| Phoenix today has plenty of water for residential and
| light industrial use, the problem is the persistence of
| agriculture. A farm in Phoenix uses something like 100x
| the amount of water compared to an equal amount of
| residential use. It was fine when there wasn't a global
| supply chain that could provide oranges or cotton at
| acceptable prices, but today the land and water have uses
| with much higher economic value.
| vel0city wrote:
| How many millions of people lived in the area in the
| early 19th century? What did their golf courses look
| like? Did they also ship those agricultural surpluses the
| Bani Khalid? Is the climate still the same?
|
| What we're doing to the land and the realities of how
| much water the area receives today is vastly different
| from what was done in the early 19th century. It seems
| meaningless to me to point out that the area managed to
| easily sustain some population of people in the early
| 1800s when so many other fundamental things are
| different.
| signatoremo wrote:
| Many cities or towns don't make sense, top of mountains,
| isolated islands, extreme weather. Yet they exist and
| people live there. They also need services.
| lotsoweiners wrote:
| A bit hyperbolic. I'd rather walk outside in Phoenix in
| July for 20 minutes instead of 10 minutes in Tampa.
| mediaman wrote:
| We're going in the opposite direction.
|
| High minimum wages are making it nearly impossible to run
| small restaurants. We're seeing restaurant apocalypse
| happening in places like Seattle and Denver, because high
| wages result in high prices which causes lower customer
| volume which causes higher fixed costs per unit, which
| causes a death spiral. Denver, for example, has 30% fewer
| restaurants now, because it's so hard to run one
| profitably.
|
| Lots of little tasty restaurants and high wages for service
| staff are basically incompatible. Many people in the city
| don't realize this and advocate for both.
|
| Of course, high wages are desirable if they can be
| accomplished without tradeoffs, but the tradeoffs are
| there.
|
| High minimum wages favor high-volume, fast service chain
| restaurants that are more labor efficient.
|
| Perhaps eventually automation will relax this tradeoff, but
| I would expect automation to primarily benefit corporate
| restaurant chains over small local eateries, unless the
| automation is so general that any restaurant can start
| using it without technical expertise or R&D.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| > High minimum wages are making it nearly impossible to
| run small restaurants.
|
| Not as much as one would think.
|
| Rent (literal) and rent seeking (lending in this case)
| are the biggest drivers in food costs today.
|
| The family restaurant in an owned building is a distant
| memory.
|
| The wholesale price of food is very low at the point of
| production (farming) and absolutely bonkers at the retail
| and wholesale levels. Mostly because at every step of the
| chain there is debt, and massive interest payments that
| need to be made.
|
| The HN set is on one side of the K shaped economy and the
| other half is looking very much like late stage
| capitalism.
|
| Case in point: Fritos. 4.50 a bag, while the Walmart
| generic version is under 2 bucks. Why? Because Pepsi
| (owner of Fritos) is competing with apple for customers,
| aka SHAREHOLDERS, and has a massive amount of debt
| compared to Walmart. The primary input in Fritos is corn,
| whos price is close to 2019 levels.
| jdlshore wrote:
| I don't think that story illustrates the point you think
| it does. Prices aren't based on cost, they're based on
| perceived value on the part of the buyer, and the
| marketing and brand recognition behind Fritos raises its
| perceived value much higher than the generic brand.
|
| To put it another way: all generic brands are cheaper
| than their name-brand counterparts, and that fact has
| nothing to do with debt or cost structures.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The lower bound of a price is the cost (or ability and
| willingness of a seller to sell), the higher bound of a
| price is the ability and willingness of a buyer to pay.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| You probably won't like not having employees. Those
| employees can start their own small cafeterias where the
| are owners who manage and work their business.
|
| The real problem is affordable housing.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Ha! Those little anarchist cafes are full of drama and
| never last.
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/anti-
| capit...
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| At least in Seattle, I believe the high minimum wage is
| due to CoL in the city, which is very high due to rent
| cost, which is high because of geography and not building
| a lot. If there was a building boom which led to a
| surplus of rental units, and rents went down, you
| wouldn't need such a high minimum wage.
| ummonk wrote:
| I thought Seattle has started addressing the housing
| shortage? At some point though for a rapidly growing city
| you can't really lower housing prices below the cost of
| building housing, and construction labor and cost of
| materials becomes a constraining factor (5 story housing
| projects can't be built super cheaply).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Seattle will always have high real estate prices due to
| its relatively high desirability in the world. What it
| doesn't have is a large supply of immigrants and/or
| illegal immigrants willing to work for low wages in
| restaurants, like NYC and California.
| toast0 wrote:
| I'm sure it'd be better to find graphs about King County
| or the greater Seattle area, but I found these graphs
| from the City of Seattle [1]. What I get from the graph
| is that there is growth in housing units, but there's
| also growth in population, so there's probably a lot of
| years at the current trends, before the housing shortage
| is 'satisfied'.
|
| [1] https://www.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/c8cfcb827e5646
| 23a6fa3...
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| WA state added a law to override local zoning regulations
| in order to encourage density. I have seen new multi
| apartment construction in Ballard, Cap Hill, and some
| other places, but there is a construction backlog going
| on for years. Also, the problem in Seattle, same as SF,
| is that there are too many SFHs vs multi apartment
| buildings/townhomes. It will take several years until
| offer surpasses demand.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| > High minimum wages are making it nearly impossible to
| run small restaurants
|
| The federal minimum wage in the US is pitiful and yes
| some cities and states do higher ones, but frankly if
| you're operating on such small margins then you need to
| increase your prices. I've seen a trend of new
| restaurants opening with fixed menus/prices per head.
| They aren't cheap, but they aren't unreasonable, and it's
| looking like at least here they are finding real footing.
| We'll see in 5-10 years what the survival rate is I
| suppose.
|
| During Covid I did a lot of interviews with very high-
| level restauranteurs (mostly chefs) in my city, several
| of which had James Beard awards and beyond. This is not a
| flex, it's purely for context. These are considered some
| of the best in the city.
|
| They all said the exact same thing: Everyone is pushing
| their prices too low and promising high-quality, fresh
| ingredients that are all locally sourced and yada yada.
| That's great, but it can't be done in a sustainable way.
| Not if you want to actually pay a living wage or offer
| even the most modest benefits to your employees. The
| larger population needs to accept the fact that if we
| want restaurants to actually survive at all, we have to
| pay more for it and treat it as more of a luxury.
|
| Good, ethical, cheap. Pick two.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| A large majority of states specify a minimum other than
| federal.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I think it's first order the rent (commercial) and second
| order the wages needed to pay rents (residential). Having
| seen the rents in the major cities I don't know how
| people manage - it's insanity.
| rkomorn wrote:
| Virtually nobody's mad at commercial landlords for being
| the only people actually making money in the (non-chain)
| restaurant industry though.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I'd love to see a law that ties the minimum wage to the
| average rent in the nearby area. Make the business owners
| and the landlords battle it out.
|
| Obviously, this suggestion is extremely tongue-in-cheek
| and would probably be absolutely awful in practice for a
| million reasons.
| spankalee wrote:
| > High minimum wages
|
| It is not the (not actually high) minimum wages. Stores
| I've known that had problems staying open were having to
| pay more than the minimum wage because housing is so
| expensive.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Yeah, the ice cream parlor in my neighborhood in Seattle
| was at one point advertising $27/hr to scoop ice cream
| because the housing shortage and worker shortage was so
| tough. That's well above minimum.
| LunaSea wrote:
| A different analysis of the same situation could be that
| there were actually too many restaurants that were not
| profitable and thus couldn't pay their workers a living
| wage thus needing to close down.
|
| And maybe also that people don't have the means (anymore)
| to go to the restaurant every other day.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| It's not the wages, it's the (commercial) rent.
| Guaranteed.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| It's not just wages, it's every single avenue on which
| the government is forcing them to incur some cost and in
| every case it favors the big chain that has more
| locations, more meals, more everything to amortize the
| costs over. It was ignorable with some mental gymnastics
| and cognitive dissonance when times were good but now
| that they aren't it's more obvious. Normally it's worth
| blaming rent to some extent but commercial RE is crap
| right now so that ain't it
| bombcar wrote:
| We have little restaurants built into every single dwelling
| unit! They're called kitchens.
|
| There's a certain minimum number of foods you need to sell
| each day which directly controls how many restaurants you
| can have in a given area.
|
| The real solution is burrito tubes: https://idlewords.com/2
| 007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_...
| fragmede wrote:
| I put my money into the toaster but no food came out.
| Please send help.
| toast0 wrote:
| Try your credit card in the microwave ;)
| ajkjk wrote:
| well if you redefine the word "restaurant", sure...
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Or people learning to cook instead of being lazy slobs.
| Knowing to cook is like knowing to read and write and to
| ride a bicycle. A grown up person who can't do it has been
| stunted in her development, and needs to fix this urgently.
| There are no excuses, except for severe physical handicaps.
|
| Plus it is cheaper, faster, healthier and tastier than
| eating out.
|
| But eating out is of course a nice social activity.
| Ordering DoorDash isn't.
| ajkjk wrote:
| or go to any other country where grabbing tasty food
| around the corner with your friends is a regular and
| affordable social activity...
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Absolutely. I think either learning to cook or moving to
| another place or country, is a whole lot easier than
| forcing an entirely new urban structure where you
| currently live.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Yeah those places are super tiny and run by one or two
| people. Or they are running them under an awning and the
| whole restaurant is built on a bicycle. Try setting up a
| bicycle restaurant anywhere in the US and see what
| happens. You can barely set up a taco truck here.
| Unfortunately to run a restaurant here you need really
| expensive restaurant real estate.
| bsder wrote:
| > You can barely set up a taco truck here.
|
| We have a ton of these food trucks all over Austin. Most
| of them ... just aren't very good. So, apparently,
| regulations aren't too onerous.
|
| And a food truck isn't exempt from the fact that
| ridiculous commercial real estate prices cause people to
| be too spread out to be able to service in walking range.
|
| And the regulations got tighter because these trucks
| _were blowing up and killing people_. I haven 't heard
| about one exploding in a while, so apparently the
| regulations had an effect.
| rwyinuse wrote:
| Yes, and to be honest if you know how to read, you can
| also cook. Just google a recipe with good reviews and
| follow it to the letter, the outcome will most likely be
| good enough.
| Marsymars wrote:
| You'd think this, but google results for recipes are full
| of slop (AI and otherwise) and what I assume are fake
| reviews.
|
| I know people whose cooking is "good enough" for
| themselves, but suspect enough from my point of view that
| I now decline any invitations for dinner where they're
| cooking.
| signatoremo wrote:
| Tell us your lifestyle and we will definitely be able to
| point out a lot of crazy things, but I'm sure they do
| make sense for you for whatever reason. Perhaps someone
| ordering DoorDash so that their family can spend more
| time together. Any blanket statement is short
| shortsighted.
| austhrow743 wrote:
| I take it you also sew your own clothing and get milk
| from your own cow?
|
| If not, what makes cooking special?
| rcpt wrote:
| Somehow that's the hardest thing to implement
| rconti wrote:
| A major factor in my choice of house location here in the
| silicon valley 'burbs was to be near "stuff".
|
| I have a small strip mall type shopping center with a
| grocery store a 2 block walk away. Brewpub, taqueria, pizza
| joint, grocery store, starbucks, UPS store, wine bar,
| fitness studio, yoga place, etc. Plus there's a post office
| another block away. Hell, yesterday I walked the 2mi
| roundtrip to the local Stanford medical outpost to have my
| blood draw done.
| renewiltord wrote:
| In general, that won't pass environmental review. So at
| least in most of California that's a non-starter. If you
| want these things you can't have environmental review, and
| you can't have community planning, and so on. And we (as a
| society) would much rather have design-by-committee than
| what you want.
|
| In San Francisco, local neighbourhoods discussed whether or
| not two ice-cream stores in the neighbourhood were too many
| ice-cream stores or not. If you don't want these people to
| have a voice you can have what you want, but if you're
| against the disenfranchisement of people then you have to
| accept that others have different tastes from you.
| stetrain wrote:
| The delivery option is more convenient and takes less time
| out of your day than driving to a restaurant. My suspicion is
| that most frequent delivery app users are ordering food more
| frequently and from further away than they would drive to if
| the delivery apps were not an option.
|
| In a similar vein, widespread full-autonomous driving cars
| will likely lead to more people taking longer commutes by
| commoditizing the cost of a ride and freeing up the time that
| would otherwise be spent driving.
| spankalee wrote:
| Yeah, induced demand is a real thing, and a huge reason to
| invest in public transit and walkable neighborhoods in the
| first place, since they benefit from induced demand as
| well.
|
| I personally really support autonomous cars for safety
| reasons, and to hopefully reduce car ownership, but the
| definitely didn't solve traffic or the external costs of
| cars. I hope there's an indirect path from then towards
| increased public transit.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| Single occupancy vehicles make up most of the traffic on
| the road. For most people, the most significant cost of
| being on the road is their time. With self driving cars,
| our roads will be full of zero occupancy vehicles.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Yeah, but it _feels_ less wasteful to move a 200lb person in
| a car than a 1lb burrito, even though the Burrito car uses
| less fuel.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| That's the distant future. Many bureaucratic and technical
| dragons to slay.
|
| Meanwhile, driverless taxis should normally be lightweight two
| seaters.
| segmondy wrote:
| ... and then we have millions of drones up in the sky to carry
| a 1lb burrito, obviously a robot that can make the burrito for
| you at home is the future.
| walterbell wrote:
| _> make the burrito for you at home_
|
| make the {approved, licensed} burrito for you at home
| candiddevmike wrote:
| You wouldn't steal DRM burrito instruction firmware
| toephu2 wrote:
| We're also still moving thousands of pounds of vehicle around a
| public highway to carry a 150lb human... so? I don't think it's
| a big deal. But yes drone delivery would be much nicer...for
| burritos.
| asdff wrote:
| That is also bad
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Why? I like the ability to move around. Bicycles are not
| practical in many major US markets.
| asdff wrote:
| 51% of car trips in the US are less than 6 miles long.
| Maybe reconsider if you need a multi ton vehicle with 300
| mile range to get a loaf of bread.
|
| https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10318
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| How will I buy my immense packages of processed food from
| Costco though?
| constantcrying wrote:
| Society really does not need food delivery at all. It would
| greatly benefit everyone involved if they went to get their
| food, either from the supermarket or some restaurant, by
| themselves.
| bitpush wrote:
| > everyone involved if they went to get their food
|
| Remember, food ingredients and people move around in large
| multi-ton vehicles as well. If you think people going from
| A-B is OK, then food going from B-A should be similarly OK.
|
| Infact, once you can pool together food, then the equation
| flips and favors food moving from B-A, rather than many
| people taking different paths from A-B
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I live in one of the biggest cities in the world, and we get
| a big grocery delivery to our door bi-weekly. It's a huge
| help to buy in bulk vs going to get a few things daily.
| asdff wrote:
| Millions of years of selection have given you a body
| designed to walk 10+ miles a day for your daily resources.
| Use it or lose it as they say. Foraging is good for you.
| vidarh wrote:
| Food delivery is how walking to the supermarket every day for
| the remaining items is viable for us. If delivery wasn't an
| option I'd be far more likely to get a car.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Its amazing how you know what other people would benefit from
| better than they do.
| cons0le wrote:
| Then it's time for cities to not be cowards, and go all in on
| the food bus hyperloop model. It needs to be like those
| conveyor sushi places, except on the scale of a city. Places
| like mcdonalds should have fleets of busses with hot-and-ready
| food just doing loops around town, only returning when they re
| stock.
|
| Companies could even share busses. Or delivery companies like
| door dash could switch to the collective bus model and turn
| thier drivers into bus drivers.
|
| I need to be able to just walk outside and flag down the
| burrito man, just like you would for an ice creme truck
| rtkwe wrote:
| Most fast food is largely cooked to order and pretty rapidly
| degrades once you try to hold it for more any real amount of
| time before consumption. /Maybe/ partially assembled burgers
| could have patties cooked right before serving or for pizza
| do a model like the pizza vending machines where it's baked
| right before it's dispensed but I don't see the version
| becoming popular where it's a lot of food fully precooked and
| assembled being predictively shuttled around town.
|
| Beyond quality issues it'd just lead to a massive amount of
| food waste too. In order to always have the order available
| you'd have to stock everything in excess of demand and food
| only holds for so long before it has to be disposed of for
| safety reasons.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| These people are trying, but I'm not very bullish on it, to
| be honest.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuhI_-QBYAE
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > ... to carry a 1lb burrito, obviously lightweight aerial
| drones are the future ...
|
| you've overlooked the trebuchet !
| objektif wrote:
| Burrito pipes are also an ongoing area of research led by
| many VC backed startups.
| bombcar wrote:
| https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito
| _...
| efitz wrote:
| Yeas ago, I thought- why not both?
|
| Use a catapult/trebuchet/cannon to launch the drone as close
| as possible to the target area - maybe use a discardable
| biodegradable sheath to improve aerodynamics. At the optimal
| distance and height, switch the drone from ballistic to
| powered mode and complete the delivery. Maybe increases
| payload (the drone doesn't have to take off carrying the
| payload). And definitely increases range, as we are not
| having to use onboard power for flight for part of the laden
| delivery, so there is more energy available for the unladen
| return trip.
|
| Personally I would love to see cannon launches but most
| localities are unlikely to approve (maybe Texas?)
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Russians mastered glide bombs - dropping dumb old rockets
| with guiding systems bolted on.
| ktosobcy wrote:
| Everything boils down to terrible (USA?) "city" planning -
| instead of having anything relatively close-by so you can walk
| to to get the groceries or the "burrito" can be delivered on
| bike it has to involved absurdly heavy car...
| asdff wrote:
| Here in socal everything is in biking distance. Best weather
| in the country. People just refuse to do it.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Imagine getting paid for riding bike in beautiful weather
| in a beautiful city.
| asdff wrote:
| Oh I tried at one point to get paid while I'm spending
| time biking anyhow. Doordash wasnt taking new dashers.
| Ubereats let me sign up but 3 days of having the app open
| I got no orders so I gave up. I guess they deprioritize
| bike delivery that heavily. Little do they know I am
| faster than cars on surface streets.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| Isn't socal famously extremely expensive to live? I don't
| live in America but that's my understanding.
| dheera wrote:
| Mostly because biking in socal is actually dangerous.
| Drivers see bikers as scum, not as bona fide road users.
| 9dev wrote:
| You know that bicycles are a thing too, right? Low-tech, muscle
| powered, no gas required, repairable, fast, and flexible too.
|
| High tech is not the answer to everything.
| trhway wrote:
| why there aren't autonomous bicycles or the autonomous things
| in that class? I remember those "cockroaches" on Castro in
| the mid-201x, saw recently another significantly larger
| "cockroach" around Palo Alto, yet they slow, and cumbersome
| in their presence on the sidewalk, and don't seem to be made
| for the road.
|
| Looking at the bicyclists "texting while biking" i think the
| delivery wouldn't be the only market for an autonomous
| bicycles.
|
| Sidenote: heard that Tesla added an "aggressive mode" to its
| FSD in which it would drive at higher speeds and would make
| more aggressive maneuvers. I suppose it isn't just Tesla as
| after more than decade of docile behavior of Waymo cars i've
| been recently aggressively cut by a Waymo, and few weeks
| before that a Waymo car asserted it's well out-of-normal left
| turn trajectory forcing us to give it way to avoid being
| barreled by it. Interesting whether such an aggressive
| autonomous driving would shorten the burrito delivery time.
| tuukkah wrote:
| E-bikes etc. are very popular. The long shifts are probably
| quite tiring otherwise.
| tuukkah wrote:
| Small delivery robots are in several (walkable) cities since a
| few years now. Starship was the first brand (they say in 270
| cities, campuses etc.): https://www.starship.xyz/
|
| (City center properties don't have drone drop/landing areas.)
|
| (The couriers here use e-bikes and similar light vehicles as
| they can navigate quicker in the traffic.)
| tantalor wrote:
| That's short sighted. A burrito is a perfect candidate for
| ballistic trajectory. They can easily absorb the high g-force
| associated with traditional mortar-style launch system, even up
| to exotic "space gun" capable of intercontinental delivery.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_mail
| umpalumpaaa wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipline_(drone_delivery_compa
| n...
| themafia wrote:
| The answer is clearly pneumatic tubes.
|
| https://youtu.be/H8uHUc0zFQQ?si=yccbG_WPoQLehHD8&t=48
| wat10000 wrote:
| https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito
| _...
| somethoughts wrote:
| The burrito ballistic tech seems like it could probably
| handle the last 10 yards problem and enable drive by
| delivery.
|
| Postmates - How we built a Burrito Cannon
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br_KqzLWunM
|
| Burrito Cannon Demo
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDdKYmStcIc
| vizzier wrote:
| A good sabot system could turn many other meals effectively
| into burritos.
| dapperdrake wrote:
| AI can help us so that it gets assembled and re-heated by the
| equilibrium process associated with landing.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Prior art from 2012:
| https://www.darwinaerospace.com/burritobomber
| avn2109 wrote:
| That's really a derivative work of the Alameda-Weehawken
| Burrito Tunnel [0].
|
| [0] https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_bur
| rito_...
| overfeed wrote:
| Still not thinking big enough, say it with me: "Fully
| Automated Space Kitchen constellations". Cryogenically frozen
| burritos. dropped from orbit, and reheated by connecting
| combinations of copper heatpipes to the fiery heatshield at
| precise times during re-entry. _Global_ delivery in 30
| minutes or less*.
|
| * No refunds on orders damaged en route by SAM, or delivery
| mechanism malfunction. Customer waives their right to any
| claims for compensation for property damage, injury or loss
| of life due to elevated delivery velocity.
| Balgair wrote:
| Flip the script!
|
| Why have installations or stores at all? Just have a self
| driving and _self making_ burrito trucks. You order one up,
| and on the way to you, it 's being made in the back. Little
| hatch on the side, shoots out onto your doorstep or through
| your window.
|
| Then, of course, you've now got an arms race of self making
| burrito trucks roaming about. Chipotle has one, Taco bell
| too. And, of course, if a Taco Bell truck knows that a
| Chipotle truck is next to it on the freeway, well, I mean,
| there's no one inside it of course. How could you _prove_
| that those nails came out of the bottom of the truck
| anyways?
|
| Pretty soon, we've got burrito trucks duking it out, battle
| bots style, on the freeways and streets. And then you gotta
| deploy countermeasures, armor, etc. Just to get your
| burrito to you. Order up two from different companies and
| you've got dinner and a show.
|
| And, honestly, is this _not_ the future we all really want?
| Giant junk food filled mech-cars blasting each other at
| high speeds from the comfort of our couches.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Finally a vision of the future I can get behind
| rkomorn wrote:
| Zume already tried with pizza in the Bay Area (though the
| trucks weren't self driving), IIRC.
|
| Didn't work out, last I checked.
|
| (Edited a bunch of times for doofusness.)
| vel0city wrote:
| Is this how the fast food wars of Demolition Man started?
| MarkSweep wrote:
| Other people mentioned Zume pizza tried this in the past.
| Currently there is a company doing this San Mateo call
| Olhso:
|
| https://www.olhsotruck.com/
|
| They have not implemented the Mad Max style of vehicular
| combat you described, yet.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| We just need to tweak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic
| _bombardment#2003_Unite...
| xoxxala wrote:
| Might work with burritos, but it doesn't work with steak:
|
| https://what-if.xkcd.com/28/
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| Speak for yourself:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UX7NJLYyb4
| somanyphotons wrote:
| Getting the mass into orbit for those heatshields sounds
| expensive
| giankhand wrote:
| And one wonders why 70% of US population is obese!!
| a4isms wrote:
| Take off and nacho them from orbit. It's the only way to be
| sure.
| modeless wrote:
| Rods from God Burritos. The second one is free, if you
| survive.
| jliptzin wrote:
| Still too inefficient. We can replace our stomachs with
| small modular nuclear reactors and instead of wasting money
| on inefficiently produced burritos, we'd only have to
| swallow one uranium pellet every 10 years.
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| trebuchet is the solution
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| Someone made an art project along these lines
|
| https://www.core77.com/posts/137981/The-Amazon-Delivery-
| Miss...
| estimator7292 wrote:
| Coming soon to a Chipotle near you: _burrito railgun_
| Johnny555 wrote:
| What's the KWh/mile of a drone versus an EV? Should factor in
| that the small drone can only deliver a single small package,
| but the EV can carry more and make multiple stops.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| I can do nearly 10km flight on 35Wh battery. Same in an EV is
| about 1.5KWh or about 40x more.
|
| Of course my drone is for FPV fun, delivery drone would be
| far less efficient.
|
| Either way cost of power negligible here.
| 05 wrote:
| I would use Arduplane figures for efficiency comparison,
| not anything from FPV quads. Mini Talon is about 1.4W*h/km
| [0]
|
| [0] https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpost.php?s=11f6090a
| 0c478...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| In China, they use E-bikes, I'm not sure why that wouldn't work
| here? Autonomous E-bikes shouldn't be that hard to manage, ya,
| they would need to balance themselves like segways, but I'm
| sure the tech is already there for it. There is no need for
| them to be full sized cars, even for crash safety...since it is
| just food that would get damaged in an accident.
| RationPhantoms wrote:
| Some anecdata; E-bikes are definitely used in other major
| cities. I lived up against the Hudson in Jersey City and
| worked out of Manhattan and that was the primary means by
| which Doordash/Ubereats was moved around.
| yunwal wrote:
| Ebikes and small scooters make up the vast majority of
| deliveries in major cities. Can't remember the last time a
| delivery driver came in a car in NYC.
| dgb23 wrote:
| In Switzerland E-bikes are very common for that purpose,
| especially in cities and towns.
| ummonk wrote:
| I don't think the weight is the issue -- cargo cars could be
| built to be lightweight but you'll still run into drag
| limitations based on cross section.
| fragmede wrote:
| Being based on something like the Renault Twizy would have a
| smaller cross-section.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy
| Wingman4l7 wrote:
| It's already happening -- Zipline partnered with Walmart and
| has been actively performing deliveries in TX and I think a few
| other places. Google's Wing may also be doing commercial
| deliveries but I don't know as much about their current status.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| I guess phoenix is good for them since they're in the area
| already, but you'd think it'd be more helpful to run this in a
| market where they're actively trialing. At least then they'd be
| doing some useful work while ramping up.
| codedokode wrote:
| What about small wheeled robots like this moving by sidewalks?
| [1] Unlike drones, they don't fall on people's head. And kids
| love to play with them by blocking their way and seeing how
| they try to find another way.
|
| [1]
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/85/Ya...
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| these things are such a nuisance on sidewalks. i wish cities
| would prevent the rollout of new commercial automated
| vehicles that make it harder for real people to make use of
| existing pedestrian infrastructure.
| codedokode wrote:
| Maybe the sidewalks should be wider? I agree that in
| historical part of the city they can be pretty narrow (can
| be fixed by narrowing or removing the car lanes though),
| but in 20th century (Soviet) developed areas the sidewalks
| are pretty wide, they can be like 10 meters (30 feet) wide
| on large streets or more.
|
| They could also use bicycle lanes, but cyclists won't like
| it.
| patall wrote:
| Have you ever seen one? Because the ones I have seen IRL
| doing deliveries where especially lost in open spaces.
| They do not make sense how they are moving and its not
| that obvious where its going. Like a goose on the side-
| walk: you need to be vary because you cannot really
| determine what it will do next. But in theory, they
| should work great ...
| codedokode wrote:
| I have seen one. They just seem to be careful and do not
| rush. And unlike goose they don't bite.
| vel0city wrote:
| Around me there are small robots that follow sidewalks and bike
| paths to deliver foods. They're essentially the size of a
| medium or large cooler with six wheels that can climb some
| stairs and curbs.
|
| https://www.starship.xyz/
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think we should go back to Pneumatic tubes. I wonder if
| justifiable size could be made. But still after infra is build
| we could move lot of food and package delivery to the system.
| maples37 wrote:
| You wouldn't be the first to suggest pneumatic delivery of
| burritos
|
| https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_.
| ..
| dheera wrote:
| Ideally the real future for food delivery is not food delivery.
|
| People should be given enough time to make and eat healthy
| food, or dine-in at a restaurant if they want to eat restaurant
| food.
|
| Boxed up food tastes bad, and is largely a solution for
| overworking people.
| dotcoma wrote:
| Cars clogging streets because someone wants a hamburger
| delivered...
|
| We live in a very dumb era.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The streets are just as clogged when they drive to the
| restaurant to eat.
| dotcoma wrote:
| You are both right in saying that cars are the root of all
| problems in urban and suburban areas.
|
| Delivery, however, has increased the number of times people
| buy a meal made by somebody else.
|
| I doubt this is good for anybody's health, and it's certainly
| not good for the planet's health.
| dheera wrote:
| > Delivery, however, has increased the number of times
| people buy a meal made by somebody else.
|
| No, I'd say it's work expectations that have increased the
| number.
|
| I took a several-month career gap and didn't order delivery
| even once. Delivered food tastes bad and as long as I have
| time I either make food (most of the time) or dine-in. But
| when "everything is on fire" and deadlines are tonight,
| delivery it is.
| Zambyte wrote:
| They already said we live in a very dumb era.
| furyofantares wrote:
| Yeah, cars should be clogging streets because people want to go
| get a hamburger instead.
| themafia wrote:
| The convenience factor means people will utilize one option
| more often than the other. These are not equivalent
| exchanges.
| fainpul wrote:
| But you understand that cars are made to transport people,
| and hamburgers are much smaller than people, hence it would
| be a tiny bit wasteful to drive hamburgers in "people cars",
| right?
| keeda wrote:
| But then a single car can carry multiple hamburgers to
| multiple people! Maybe that is still a better situation
| than multiple people driving multiple cars to each get a
| single hamburger :-)
| ok_dad wrote:
| So we need a car that drives around and makes hamburgers
| on-demand, drives to your home while it's being prepared,
| and delivers it hot and fresh to your door with a smaller
| bot.
|
| To be clear, we _do not_ need this, and I am being
| sarcastic. However, if a VC wants to fund me to do this,
| I 'll try my best in the hours between my use of the
| startup's office sim-rig and the office wood workshop.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I believe you've (re)invented food trucks :)
| ok_dad wrote:
| Automated, VC-funded food trucks! Shittier food with less
| heart for twice the price!
| dotcoma wrote:
| And they scale! ;)
| paxys wrote:
| It probably depends on where you live but I haven't had a
| food delivery in a car in like 3-4 years now. Drivers use
| bikes, e-bikes and mopeds.
| asdff wrote:
| If only someone invented some sort of 25lb vehicle that one
| can use their own human power to travel upon. Maybe something
| with a chain and gearing? No, that would be fantasy, back to
| my 5000lb steel block I go.
| ponector wrote:
| And one can pay for that hamburger in four installments!
| dotcoma wrote:
| Agree to paying a fifth installment and you can get your
| hamburger pre-chewed.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| As long as the delivery doesn't occur during rush hour, you
| probably won't notice it much.
| themafia wrote:
| The environment will.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| You mean the emissions from the EV doing the delivery? Or
| the emissions from the hydro or solar or wind (or even
| natural gas) used to generate the electricity that was
| stored in the battery?
| themafia wrote:
| The absurd waste of energy in moving a 4000lb object to
| deliver a 1lb object. You can attribute that to whatever
| source you want. It's still wasted energy.
| bgwalter wrote:
| Waymo, a company with an operating loss of $1.23 billion in the
| first quarter and revenues declining by 9% in that quarter
| launches subsidized food delivery in Phoenix, undercutting humans
| who need the money.
| bitpush wrote:
| That's the wrong framing to look at.
|
| When you buy a car, do you stop to think of the taxi drivers
| who lost money because of that choice? Or when you grow
| vegetables, the potential loss of income to farmers?
|
| The right way to think about is in aggregate. Does this improve
| the productivity of the _society_, and if the answer is yes -
| then we (especially folks on HN) should be supportive of
| technological progress.
| bgwalter wrote:
| It is not progress when a monopoly uses dumping prices in
| order to become a bigger monopoly. It may be in fact illegal.
| daedrdev wrote:
| If Waymo ever raises prices drivers can easily re-join the
| market and compete, the cost of doing so is basically free,
| so how is this a monopoly? There is no barrier to entry for
| their competition in the food delivery market
| bitpush wrote:
| It is right to be skeptical, but I dont see how monopoly
| plays into this at all. Even if we assume Google is a
| monopoly company with Search or Ads, how Waymo delivers has
| got nothing to do with Search and Ads.
|
| Perhaps you were trying to Google is a big tech company and
| they have gobs of cash, and that's why they are doing it.
| Precisely, and it is a public market company - so if it
| isnt a good use of their money, people will vote with their
| wallet.
|
| Also, there are other richer companies (Apple etc) who can
| do exactly this thing. Nobody is stopping or unfairly being
| affected due to Waymo delivering food.
| toephu2 wrote:
| > undercutting humans who need the money.
|
| That's not how capitalism nor the world works..
|
| That's communism and it doesn't work (each according to his
| needs, each according to his abilities).
|
| Greed and capitalism are what make the world go 'round.
| bgwalter wrote:
| > That's not how capitalism nor the world works..
|
| Scott Bessent worked with Soros (who was previously the devil
| for Republicans, but I digress). His buddy Mr. Citrone (also
| Soros) was betting heavily on Argentine. Turns out that
| Chainsaw-Milei wasn't so competent after all and Argentine
| needs a bailout. So, in the best socialist manner, Citrone is
| bailed out under the condition that Milei is reelected.
|
| Or should we talk about DARPA socialism for companies or
| socialism for the Silicon Valley bank?
|
| > each according to his needs, each according to his
| abilities
|
| That is called the Peter Principle in "capitalism".
| bgwalter wrote:
| The Waymo people are so ruthless with eliminating dissent. It
| is understandable given that no one but nerds wants to ride in
| a surveilled dorky car and children can disable it with a
| traffic cone.
|
| Enjoy your operating loss!
|
| EDIT (in reply to the attacks below):
|
| "The reason you look like a dork riding a Segway is that you
| look smug."
|
| Source: "Leftist" Paul Graham
| astrange wrote:
| This is an example of the online species "dirtbag leftist who
| posts like a bully from an 80s teen movie for some reason"
| [0].
|
| Nobody cares that much if they're in a "dorky" car or not.
| Women don't want Uber drivers sexually harassing them, other
| people don't want Uber drivers trying to convert them to a
| new religion or lecturing them about their weird opinions on
| every imaginable topic, and almost every other culture is
| more twee than Americans and not obsessed with looking cool.
|
| [0] Their origin story is thinking "nerds" were bad because
| they were gutless centrists or something, so they started
| replying to them on Twitter with stuff about "shoving them in
| lockers". They've evolved into people whose main policy is
| that petty crimes like transit fare evasion are actually good
| because they make cities into a kind of dive bar where being
| there makes you cool and gets you laid.
| cudgy wrote:
| Currently it cost DoorDash an Ubereats 2 to 3 dollars to send
| food to the front door of someone's house. It takes about 20 to
| 30 minutes for that driver to form all the steps to do the
| delivery. This works out to $6 dollars per hour of driver time.
| The driver is paying insurance, gas, time, depreciation
| insurance, accident repairs, maintenance, and everything.
| DoorDash pays $144 per day for approximately 48 deliveries with a
| human driver.
|
| Now let's try to assess the automated car situation. Assuming
| each delivery is about 5 miles that works out to 240 miles per
| day for 48 deliveries. Most cars are useful for 100,000 miles so
| the vehicle should be able to deliver for about 416 days.
| Assuming it gets gas mileage of 30 miles per gallon and gas costs
| $4 per gallon (using gas for simplicity though these are probably
| electric) for $13,333 in fuel over the life of the vehicle.
| Maintenance for these vehicles will vary of course, but a
| reasonable estimate is $1000 per year for brakes, oil changes,
| etc. adding up to $1140 total over the life of the vehicle. There
| are other costs that will be required as well like parking for
| the car when it's not in use, cleaning of the car outside and
| inside, software maintenance, etc which I am unable to estimate,
| but it won't matter as you'll see below.
|
| Automated cars are likely to cost at least 60k each (being really
| generous here ... see below) given current prices on cars.
|
| Cost of vehicle - $60,000 / $200,000 Vehicle Maintenance - $1140
| Fuel - $13,333 Insurance - $1000 Other costs??? Total automated
| driver - $75,473 / $215,473
|
| * Found article that states Waymo vehicles cost $200,000 as of
| June 2025, but included the scenario where the cost of the car is
| $60,000 and human drivers are still less expensive. So even if
| the Waymo vehicles dropped to 1/3 the current cost which is not
| likely, they are still more expensive than human drivers.
|
| "Waymo vehicles are equipped with numerous expensive sensors and
| can cost roughly $200,000, enough to buy five or six regular
| cars. As of May, there were just 1,500 Waymos operating in all
| its markets."
|
| https://sherwood.news/tech/as-the-race-for-autonomy-heats-up...
|
| Total Human driver - 416 days x $144 = $59,904
|
| Rough napkin calculations show that it's not cheaper for the
| company to buy some brand new, super high-tech automobile that is
| unproven and requires tons of research and development to refine
| it to the point that it can't even complete the complete task
| (pick up food at counter and delivering food to the door of the
| customer).
| bombcar wrote:
| The company does it not because they think it will be cheaper
| but because if they DON'T do it, and something changes, someone
| else will eat their (delivered) lunch.
| cudgy wrote:
| Even when it doesn't accomplish the task and cost three times
| more than the current method? Seems like we're far away from
| this working.
|
| Don't do what? They're just buying Waymo cars and building a
| plug-in to send waypoints to the car from their delivery
| software system. Waymo did all the hard work.
| niwtsol wrote:
| I think this assumption is incorrect "Most cars are useful for
| 100,000 miles so the vehicle should be able to deliver for
| about 416 days."
|
| There are several reports of the older version waymo cars
| lasting >200k miles, that would double the cost of your human
| driver and make the low end more profitable.
|
| I'd assume that the insurance waymo has to pay per car is much
| lower as the removal of human drivers and proof of XXX miles
| driven without incident would drastically reduce the risk to
| insure. I also think the economies of scale and 24/7 always on
| + improvements on iterations will do nothing but drive those
| costs down.
| guimplen wrote:
| Oh wow, it almost like Yandex delivery in some districts of
| Moscow. Though there it is a land drone.
| m_kos wrote:
| I live in a big city. DoorDash always delivers to an address 10
| minutes away walking from my building. It is quite inconvenient
| in the winter. With human drivers, you can at least try to
| convince them to use Google Maps, but with an AI?
|
| On second thought, prompt injection via delivery instructions?
| fainpul wrote:
| Ah, Phoenix -- as prophesised by "Not Just Bikes"!
|
| https://youtu.be/040ejWnFkj0?si=buVxsUBX4tIRmxDS&t=858
| Animats wrote:
| How does this work? The customer has to go outside to a car, open
| the door (or trunk) and take an object?
| keeda wrote:
| Interesting that there's no mention in TFA or the comments about
| DoorDash's ground-based delivery "drones":
| https://about.doordash.com/en-us/news/doordash-unveils-dot --
| I've seen them testing these things in parts of the Bay Area for
| more than a year now.
|
| I think they're intended to use sidewalks and bike lanes, so
| should address concerns about cars clogging up streets.
|
| My hunch is that just because they're smaller and lighter does
| not mean it's an easier problem to solve than a self-driving car.
| A more interesting partnership between Waymo and DoorDash would
| be licensing a scaled-down version of the Waymo tech for these
| things.
| spankalee wrote:
| I wonder if there's just not enough money in that, because it
| sounds like a brilliant idea.
|
| The Waymo driver could get a lot of experience working in a
| different but adjacent environment with much lower stakes. It
| still has to navigate and look out for pedestrians, cars,
| signals, construction and obstructions, and possibly human
| traffic directors.
| asdff wrote:
| They have deployed some of these in LA by other companies e.g.
| Coco robotics. Really ridiculous offering imo. It moves slower
| than walking speed. Even slower when you factor in all the
| unnavigable obstacles they run into like upturned sidewalks,
| debris in the sidewalk, homeless encampments, etc. There are of
| course videos online of them being vandalized or broken into.
| Videos of them crossing the road like a game of Frogger. What
| is more is that they are actually controlled by a person vs
| actually being some automated solution. And then they have to
| wait there on the sidewalk until the customer comes and picks
| up the food. They can't manage going into buildings of course.
|
| I can't imagine getting food delivered from only a half mile
| away in 30+ mins but that's the offering I guess. Not sure why
| so many people these days are tolerating soggy cold food sold
| to them at a markup.
|
| This video was pretty ironic: waymo crashing into one of these
| crossing the sidewalk
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bit1OjJBB0Y
| SoftTalker wrote:
| How do they prevent food from being stolen out of the drones?
| When I delivered pizza that was a real problem, you had to be
| sure you never left your car unlocked with pizzas inside and
| never be away from it any longer than necessary.
| blhack wrote:
| These are all over the place in Tempe, AZ. I see them cruising
| through my neighborhood all the time.
|
| The funny thing is that there is usually a guy on an ebike
| following right behind, and he's usually just _decked_ out in
| sortof tactical-ish gear. Full mask, head to toe in all black.
| I feel bad for whoever it is in the summer, because it gets
| really hot here.
|
| Very interesting to see.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| I imagine a non-trivial percentage of the city can't be
| navigated by sidewalks alone, and a lot of the sidewalks are in
| bad enough condition that they couldn't be navigated unless the
| wheels and clearance are quite large, but who knows.
| jeffwask wrote:
| I foresee this generating a lot of really funny TikTok's.
| robotnikman wrote:
| I've noticed these little wheeled drones running around in the
| bicycle lanes in the east valley, usually with a biker following
| it not too far behind. I kind of figured they were going to be
| using them to roll out an autonomous delivery service at some
| point.
| throwacct wrote:
| Don't get me wrong, the gig economy is really bad, but
| unfortunately covers a big chunk of jobs. When this scales up
| (and it will), what would happen to these people and the economy
| in general? There won't be an UBI reasonable enough to deal with
| the aftermath of this reality (basic law of supply and demand).
|
| If things keep going the they are right now, in less than 50
| years (give or take 10 years?), we could literally see the
| economic landscape migrating from a capitalist society to a neo
| feudalistic one, where companies will basically control
| everything (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, are basically investing in
| everything, from health to food) and people just work (if there
| are still any left), just to survive.
|
| Interesting times we're living...
| paxys wrote:
| In the worst case we'll go back to where things were ~10 years
| ago. Not exactly earth shattering for society.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| I guess I'm not quite as doom and gloom about this as you.
|
| Population demographics are trending downward in advanced
| societies and the trend is worsening. Finding solutions for the
| reduction in low training required workforce is necessary
| unless you want to drastically ramp up immigration policies.
|
| As the transition occurs, dials on immigration policy can be
| adjusted to help maintain a consistent/decent price floor on
| the jobs that remain.
|
| Trade skills are flourishing and, to my understanding, are in
| exceptionally high demand. Some folks doing gig work will make
| that leap and will experience much higher quality of life.
|
| These changes aren't happening overnight. Those who are
| unwilling to make adjustments will have their quality of life
| reduced. It's not sexy, but it is how the world has always
| worked.
|
| I'm sure my comments can be perceived as callous. I'm truly not
| trying to be. I just find it odd that the framing isn't, "Wow,
| for a period of time we were able to get more jobs to a
| significantly large amount of the population due to innovation.
| How fortunate." since that seems as fair a take as one saying
| those jobs are being destroyed due to the same innovation.
| throwacct wrote:
| > "Wow, for a period of time we were able to get more jobs to
| a significantly large amount of the population due to
| innovation. How fortunate."
|
| Here's the thing: This is good for the economy and human
| development overall.
|
| What we're witnessing right now is the opposite: Mega corps
| trying to control almost every industry, and shifting the
| economic and social landscape from a capitalistic society to
| a neo-feudalistic one.
|
| The socioeconomic implications of this shift will be
| something humanity has never experienced before, since the
| endgame is to automate everything. If we get to that point,
| either the government seizes the means of production (I don't
| agree with that since this is communism) and distributes
| wealth, or the government charges nearly a 97% on taxes
| (capital gains, etc but taxation is basically theft, hehe)
| and we start living in a "Jetsons"-like society, or we get a
| feudalistic society (hopefully I'm dead wrong).
|
| Is there an in-between?
| mercurialsolo wrote:
| robots in the warehouse talking to robots on the streets talking
| to car robots. starting of robot swarms
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| Who takes the food from the restaurant to the Waymo? The
| restaurant employees? Or is this more akin to the drone model
| where a Dasher is still involved and transports the food from the
| restaurant to the autonomous vehicle?
| paxys wrote:
| Sidewalk pickup is already a thing in plenty of places, so this
| doesn't sound all that different.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| Sorry, I'm confused. I think it's totally reasonable to
| expect the customer to pick-up the food from the Waymo by
| walking to it. I feel that's what you were responding to, but
| I'm interested in the dynamic between the restaurant and the
| vehicle.
|
| It just doesn't seem like it's guaranteed that the Waymo will
| even have parking availability adjacent to the restaurant. It
| seems wholly unreasonable to expect a restaurant employee to
| walk an order down a block to put it in a vehicle. Imagine
| it's rush hour, you've got a line of customers out the door,
| and one of your employees is constantly having to stop
| working the line to shuttle orders. You'd likely have to
| staff with that in mind in order to support that dynamic. The
| current model is one where dashers wait in the restaurant and
| grab the bag from the "to go" counter. It would seem like the
| restaurant's expectation would be for that model to continue
| with the introduction of Waymos.
|
| What am I missing?
| paxys wrote:
| Sidewalk pickup from stores & restaurants is also a thing.
| You place an order, drive your car up to the restaurant,
| and someone brings the order up to your car. Infinitely
| easier than finding a parking spot and walking into the
| store, especially in a busy neighborhood. This is the same
| thing.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| Hummm. Okay. I guess I'm aware of this for like, grocery
| pickup or calling ahead for something like a BestBuy
| order, but I always envisioned those things being
| situations where the customer parks in a parking lot out
| in front of the store.
|
| When I take Waymos around SF, a really common part of the
| process is, upon reaching the drop-off location, the
| Waymo realizes there's no space, the road is too busy to
| comfortably double-park, and it shifts into "Looking for
| a spot to pull-over..." mode. It's not uncommon for it to
| drive a full block away from my drop-off location in
| order to find a safe spot.
|
| I was applying that mindset to this situation. I agree
| that if they can guarantee that a Waymo is just
| parking/double-parking right in front of the store and
| all the employee has to do is take a step outside, drop
| it in the trunk, and shut the trunk - that that is
| sustainable.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Sprinkle some LLM when assembling your cart (aka Walmart / OpenAI
| partnership), and you got entire futuristic pipeline.
| asimpleusecase wrote:
| Ballistic food , not so great. Years ago we went to an ice hockey
| game with our children.subway sandwich was there with their
| sandwich gun. They can shoot 6 inch sandwiches into the crowd.
| They got carried away and some sandwiches hit the ceiling of the
| arena, some disassembled on route to the crowd but most made to
| happy sports fans. My oldest son was quite young still and he was
| so distraught/ disgusted by the bits of sandwich flying around he
| has never entered a subway sandwich shop since then.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| Sorry about the impact on your son, but that's a hilarious
| story.
| vvpan wrote:
| This is tangential, but I worked for a food delivery startup (a
| conscientious one) for a couple of years and food delivery is a
| terribly extractive business that kills restaurants. Either order
| from the restaurant directly or just go there yourself, Doordash
| et. al. will kill your favorite restaurant with your help. The
| numbers don't add up in the kitchen's favor.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It can work, pizza delivery has been able to be profitable for
| example. But they are set up from the concept to be delivery
| businesses, and they have that accounted for in their pricing.
| Doordash trying to extract profit and pay a driver and put that
| all on the restaurant? No that's not going to work. As a
| restaurant I'd refuse Doordash orders at any less than full
| menu price, and paid on pickup not maybe three months later. If
| the customer wants the convenience of delivery to their door
| they need to pay for it.
| amelius wrote:
| Of course it can work, the delivery companies need to
| restaurants to stay alive. But they will be barely alive.
|
| Are middlemen ever a good idea? What about middlemen that
| become the gatekeepers of your business.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Middlemen are often a good idea, yes. Can you imagine if
| for every single item you wanted to buy you had to go to
| the original manufacturer? And now suddenly every
| manufacturer needs to also become a seller and distributor?
| zamadatix wrote:
| Without middlemen every restaurant would have to be farm to
| table, which is a significant burden from many angles and
| would probably result in more shutting down than delivery
| services could.
|
| Cutting out the middleman is great... but only when you run
| the numbers and it makes sense, not as a universal truth.
| porphyra wrote:
| Honestly, food delivery from restaurants is one of these things
| that is a big economic mismatch. The restaurant is spending
| tons of money on their nice dining room and part of the price
| of the food is supposed to be the experience of eating there.
| Yet, when you are ordering delivery, you are getting a subpar
| dining experience, plus you have to cover the additional cost
| of transporting the food. This means that someone is getting
| squeezed --- the restaurant is not getting paid enough, the
| delivery person is getting paid peanuts, or the buyer is having
| to pay a ludicrous price for the food.
| StevenNunez wrote:
| I'm so thirsty for Elixir success stories I got prematurely
| excited from the headline
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