Building out depot and charging infrastructure and working with city officials are both slow processes, so I imagine you'll see them prioritize spreading out to a lot of cities first, in the most profitable areas (downtown), then expand the service area in each of them over time as they get more cars.
> People say yes it drives, but it drives like a rookie
I think you just made this up. Almost every anecdote I've heard, and I spend a lot of time in two cities where it's launched, is that "it drives better than most humans". Which is exactly how I would characterize it too. It doesn't drive exactly like a human. But for every subtle human behavior it doesn't do, there are probably several things it does much more skillfully than a human.
I rode in one in Austin TX for the first time last weekend. I was going from UT back to a hotel in a different part of downtown. No complaints, it was a smooth experience granted it didn't face anything I would see as out of the ordinary or unexpected while driving. Edit: well one thing i thought was interesting, it came up behind a delivery truck stopped in the lane. Instead of just stopping and waiting forever, which is what i expected, it turned on the blinker and got in the oncoming traffic lane, passed the truck and then returned to the correct lane. It crossed two solid yellow lines on the road to do this which is usually a no-no but in this case fine. That stuck out to me as something rather advanced to automate (when to wait and when to pass/overtake)
European cities have lots of taxis. Same with Asian cities. They will obviously have AVs in the future. I'm not sure why you think they should be mutually exclusive with transit.
It's a "joke" (I wouldn't call it that, but it's a vastly different product) because you have to pay attention to the road at all times.
You don't live in a Waymo city, so I understand. A lot of people who don't live in a Waymo city don't really get it.
Waymo is a completely different product than FSD. It's a robot that comes and drives you from point A to point B. You can do whatever you want while it's driving, such as take a nap or work on your laptop.
One of the main reasons to vertically integrate is to expand margins by squeezing cost out of the value chain. My point still stands: Waymo will never have margins as good as search.
How much money they've spent in the past is irrelevant. That money all came from investors, in exchange for a stake in the company. It never needs to be "paid back". Besides which, those investors have earned all those funds back already, and then some (on paper).
All that matters at this point is how much money they'll lose/earn in the future. There are no shortage of investors willing to put money into this effort, and they're growing exponentially, so there won't be any pressure for them to turn overall profitable for several more years.
Boeing may never make back the development costs of the 787. That was an absolutely epic disaster of a project. But that doesn't mean Boeing shouldn't build and sell every 787 they can profitably sell.
If Waymo is at breakeven including capex, opex, and overhead, operations logistics becomes the limiting factor. While Alphabet is capable of investing more money into Waymo, I think they've reached the tipping point. If you see Waymo expansion accelerate, bet on that tipping point having been reached.
I have a slightly different take than others on this: I think the main contributor is the fact Toronto's financial district is extremely dense compared to most if not all European cities, and serviced by a highly trafficked subway line that loops around it. Many of the large office skyscrapers are built right on top of the subway, and so they naturally have a public underground connection, and usually it's a mini-mall with a food court and amenities for the office workers. Because of downtown's density these kind of just merged together into the larger PATH network.
The weather is of course also a factor. It's just incredibly convenient in the winter, or even in the summer when it's muggy out, for office workers. You just hop onto the elevator during your lunch or coffee break, wearing your office clothes, no need to throw on a jacket or bring an umbrella or anything. It's just an extension of your office building basically.
Toronto ALSO has healthy commercial streets all over the place that you access from street level and that DON'T connect to these tunnels. It's a very large city. The PATH tunnels are just one district.
Well, no, almost everything you said simply isn't true. Immigrants create jobs. They create homes. They make healthcare more available. Why? Because they work productively, they earn money, and they spend it in the US. "Illegals" do all this while paying taxes without being eligible for benefits, so arguably they help America more than an average citizen.
There are good reasons to limit immigration, but "they're taking our jobs" isn't one of them.
