The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 40 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 4 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Mawakana: Waymo has 'conviction' it requires LiDAR, radar, and cameras
“So obviously we have conviction that we need LIDAR, radar, and cameras.”
Calacanis: New York, Boston, and DC Will Ban or License Waymo
“You're going to see, I will predict it now. They're going to ban Waymo's in New York, Boston, DC, and they're going to limit them with licenses.”
Calacanis: Uber and Waymo stopped recruiting drivers in scaled autonomous markets
“If you talk to Uber and Waymo in the cities where Waymo is present and has gotten past a couple of hundred cars, they've stopped recruiting drivers. Drivers are either static or going down in those markets.”
Kalanick: Waymo leads in autonomy but lacks scale and urgency
“Look, I think Waymo obviously is ahead. The existence proof is there. Their issue is manufacturing and scale and urgency and fierceness.”
Kalanick: Waymo takes 100x more energy to drive than a human
“The Waymo machine takes a hundred times more energy to drive a Waymo than a human does to drive a Waymo.”
Chamath: Human driving will be limited to luxury cars while most use FSD or Waymo
“So it probably is that there's going to be a bunch of high-end cars like Ferrari, where you pay for the experience. You're in a position to pay for the car. You'll pay for the insurance. All of it. And then the rest of us will be using FSD or Waymo.”
Austin Uber drivers earn as much or more following Waymo's local launch
“Austin drivers now are making as much or more money than they were before we introduced Waymo.”
Chamath: Waymo and Tesla will dominate autonomous market, forcing OEM consolidation
“I think that Waymo and Tesla are gonna run away with this market, and I think it's gonna force a bunch of consolidation in the traditional auto OEMs.”
Bannister: Autonomous vehicles will be largest robotics breakout in history
“This is going to be the largest breakout in robotics we've ever seen if Waymo's any indicator.”
Calacanis predicts massive consolidation between Tesla, Uber, Waymo, and delivery apps
“I think the age of autonomy is here, and I think there is going to be Some partnerships that will happen between Amazon, DoorDash, Uber, Tesla, Waymo, and that cohort, and I would not be surprised to see Tesla could buy Uber right now for but 10% of its market…”
Friedberg predicts Waymo will execute a major financing, IPO, or merger
“You could see something happen with Waymo this year that could either be something like a massive financing, an IPO, or a merger or acquisition with one of the big ride-sharing companies. I don't know if that makes as much strategic sense as I've thought about…”
Mawakana: Waymo has 73% fewer injury crashes than human drivers
“What we've been able to determine as of June of this year with over twenty-two million, what we refer to as RO miles, those are miles that are fully autonomous. We've been able to have 83% fewer airbag deployments, which of course is important because those ar…”
Mawakana: Waymo is the only company operating Level 4 autonomy 24/7
“We're the only company that's doing level four driving on public roads, 24 hours a day.”
Calacanis values YouTube at $400B and Waymo at $50B as spin-offs
“YouTube and Waymo, those would be like a four hundred billion dollar company, a fifty billion dollar company.”
Baker: Visiting cities without autonomous vehicles will feel barbaric and unsafe
“I think going to a city where you can't get in a Waymo or a cyber cab is going to feel barbaric and unsafe.”
Palihapitiya warns failing to IPO Waymo sets bad precedent for investors
“Now it's up to Google to live up to their part of the bargain, because if it doesn't get liquid, it sets a very bad precedent for everybody that committed capital into that company.”
Friedberg notes Waymo captured 22% of the San Francisco rideshare market
“Waymo launched in SF in August, 20, 23 in kind of an open market way. Uber and Lyft were 66 and 34% market share at the time. And in 15 months in November of 2024, Waymo is now a 22% market share of rides in SF, which is the same as Lyft and Uber is now down t…”
Mawakana: Cruise safety incident led to more AV scrutiny in SF
“It definitely led to more scrutiny in San Francisco because there was already an active and continues to be a fairly active voice against technology in San Francisco”
Mawakana: Waymo is the only company providing autonomous airport pickups
“We're the only company that can pick you up autonomously at the airport, right?”
Mawakana: Waymo can't become profitable by building everything in-house
“We have the partnership with Uber because we think it's important for us to create an AV ecosystem around this technology. Like, this isn't going to be, we've created technology and we're going to figure out everything ourselves. Like, that would be foolish an…”
Mawakana: Waymo technology will eventually be sold in consumer cars
“We've always had as part of our strategy from the beginning that we would start with ride hailing and local delivery and that eventually we would make our technology available to automotive companies so that this, you know, at some point you'll find Waymo cars…”
Friedberg: Meta and Amazon lack high-value call options like Google's Waymo
“Meta and Amazon do not have an isomorphic lab and Waymo sitting inside their business that suddenly pops to a couple hundred billion of market cap. And Google does have a few of those.”
Calacanis: Autonomous vehicles and robots will deliver packages to doorsteps
“Most people are incapable at this point of imagining a Waymo robo-taxi, an Uber self-driving car, and a robot getting out and bringing the packages to your doorstep. That's gonna happen.”
Friedberg argues independent governance and outside capital improve corporate subsidiary performance
“By bringing in outside capital and having an independent board for these subsidiaries, they were actually able to drive better outcomes because now there was governance and there was aligned interests that could then take management and say, guys, if you can d…”
Chamath: Waymo vehicles run AI models entirely on-board without remote POPs
“I talked to Takedra. And what's interesting is the Waymo approach is they don't need pops anywhere because all of the models are on board. So these things go fully autonomous units out into the wild. They can make every decision themeselves. They have the lida…”
Friedberg: Waymo is completing 250,000 rides per week across four cities
“250,000 rides a week now, growing like crazy, and they're only like four cities.”
Sacks: Self-driving technology will get bigger and bigger next year
“Yeah, I think this is the year that self-driving finally broke through. Obviously, Tesla's got full self-driving, but also this Waymo One app, people are going wild over it, so I think this is the year that self-driving broke through, and I think next year's g…”
Mawakana: Waymo drives more in a week than a human in a lifetime
“The, you know, we drive in a week more than a human drives in a lifetime.”
Mawakana: Waymo completes over 100,000 paid rides weekly
“It's completely true. And it's over a 100,000. Per week, yeah.”
Mawakana: Waymo is not currently considering open-sourcing its technology
“So on the question of open sourcing, that isn't something that we're spending a lot of time talking about right now.”
Mawakana: Waymo is exclusively focused on Level 4 autonomy and above
“We are only focused on level four and above level four and above means you do not need a driver's license, nor do you need to sit behind the wheel.”
Calacanis: Waymo Is Doubling Its Fleet Every Six Months
“Waymo. They're doubling the number of cars on the road, like every six months or so.”
Chamath: Waymo is about to hit 250,000 daily autonomous miles
“I think the amount of miles driven per day by Waymo is about to pass 250,000.”
Waymo driverless rides are currently active on Uber in Austin and Atlanta
“Waymo, Waymo is working with us now in Austin and Atlanta. So in Austin and Atlanta, if you're using Uber, ah, you can be picked up, ah, with a Waymo.”
Mawakana: Waymo has operated 24/7 driverless ride-hailing since 2020 in three markets
“A lot of people don't realize we've had a 24 seven ride hailing service around the clock. It was in 2020 during COVID though. That we removed the driver from behind the wheel. So we have the WeMo driver that's driving the vehicles at all time, but there's no h…”
Mawakana: 36% of Waymo's San Francisco rides are to local businesses
“36% were using, The vehicles to go to local businesses”
Mawakana: Waymo's SF fleet operated through severe storms without downtime
“We've tested across 25 cities specifically for that, so we had massive storms in San Francisco last year. And we didn't take down the fleet, like our fleet was able to handle all of the rain.”
Mawakana: One-third of Waymo's San Francisco riders use it for doctor visits
“We just did a UX study, and we found that a third of people use the service in San Francisco to go to their doctor appointments.”