Depends where you live. In SF, parking alone is more than $300/mo if you have to pay for a spot. Also, many companies subsidize Waymo rides for employees as part of their commuter benefits.
They are often still offered as benefits to the employee.
Offering Waymo and taxis as "commuter" benefits (meaning, to/from the employee's home) to the employee is considered taxable income to the employee unless it's used so rarely that it is considered a nontaxable fringe benefit.
As this creates payroll headaches, most companies outside of perhaps a few in the Bay Area do not offer Waymo or taxis or black car services or Uber/Lyft as "benefits" to the employee.
This is different from the kind of travel costs that can be expensed by employees (i.e., for business trips, client meetings, etc.).
You can probably infer the average number of active cars from trips and utilization metrics, which are out there (at least for California I believe they report this).
E.g. 450,000 trips/week * 15 min/trip / 0.56 loaded:empty miles / (24760) ~= 1200.
I think some of the external investors have board seats, so the outside people do get a (small) say in things. And to your point, that's probably also a good thing for avoiding another Stadia mistake.
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.
