In an interview with CNBC on Thursday, Waymo‘s co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana was questioned about the company’s profitability and competition from Tesla‘s upcoming ride-hailing service.
The executive highlighted that Waymo is “the only company that, starting October of 2020, removed the driver” from the vehicle.
Musk said this week that Tesla will provide the first driverless rides in late June in Austin. The fleet will include 10 autonomous Model Ys in the first week (before expanding in the third quarter) while teleoperators will be supervising the vehicles remotely.
Waymo One, the company’s fully autonomous ride-hailing service uses adapted Jaguar i-Pace vehicles equipped with LiDAR technology, detailed city-by-city mapped routes, and remote assistance.
In contrast, Tesla‘s Model Ys and the upcoming Cybercabs will rely solely on its camera-based Tesla Vision system.
Waymo‘s co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said on Thursday she sees LiDAR as a crucial safety feature, stating, “I think it’s been really important for us to prove out the safest path to doing this. For us, there’s no reason to eliminate aspects that make it safe.”
Questioned if she thinks Tesla “is focusing on cost and then safety,” Makawana said that “it’s less of a focus on them and more of a focus on what we’ve learned.”
While recognizing that “there’s probably a lot of ways it can be done,” Mawakana noted that Waymo has been doing it “24 hours a day for almost five years” and, for that, “it’s really important to focus on safety, not on safety and then cost, not cost and then safety.”
During Tesla‘s earnings call held last month, Elon Musk joked with the cost of manufacturing each Waymo robotaxi, saying “the issue with Waymo’s cars is it costs Way-mo money.“
Musk said Waymo “decided that an expensive sensor suite is the way to go, even though Google is very good at AI,” dismissing Waymo’s efforts as he doesn’t see “anyone being able to compete with Tesla at present.”
Mawakana stated that the company is “super focused on building a sustainable business,” which includes “profitability, of course, as well as costing down our entire tech stack.”
Earlier this week, the Alphabet’s subsidiary completed 10 million driverless trips across Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Phoenix.
“At the end of last year, we had hit 5 million trips,” Makawana said, adding that it took “only five months” to double it. “And these are paid trips,” she added.
Earlier this year, Alphabet and Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai revealed Waymo had reached “more than 200,000 paid trips” in a week across LA, Phoenix and San Francisco.
The service was integrated in Austin via a partnership with Uber earlier this year. Tesla is launching its full-self driving ride-hailing services late next month in Austin, starting with “maybe 10 to 20” autonomous Model Ys on day one.
Waymo rides through Uber are also being launched to select customers in Atlanta, before the service officially rolls out in the summer. The company plans to expand its ride-hailing services in Miami and Washington D.C. next year.
