I’ve enjoyed the ~70 or so Waymo rides I have taken but to me Waymo, Uber, and Lyft are methods of last resort.
My feet, BART, and SFMuni are my primary methods of transportation and for $104/mo I can take an unlimited number of trips, usually very conveniently.
Same model as airlines.
There construction happening a block down the road from me. As part of the work, the rightmost lane is often blocked during the day (in between rush hours), so that things like concrete pumping can take place. The lane block starts just before where I live.
Around the same time, I noticed that when I would try to take Waymo (which I used to get to PT), I'd be told that things are busy and rides are paused. Recently, I've noticed that if I'm at work (or the PT place) and I want to take a Waymo back home, I'm told "Can't get to that spot right now".
If I had Waymo Premier, I wonder how hard it would be to get a refund on my subscription.
The above talks about a complete block (or, a complete-enough block) to using the service, but what about a major impediment? For example, let's say I travel regularly, and use Waymo to get to/from San Jose airport. Waymo's been disabling highway routes, which for me equates to 20-minute (or more) travel-time increase from home to airport. Would that be enough to qualify for a refund on the subscription?
> Waymo Premier is a new invite-only membership program built for those who rely on us most. For a monthly fee, members gain access to a suite of exclusive benefits designed to make their journey more seamless and rewarding:
Priority Pickups: Skip the line with prioritized matching
Ride Savings: Earn 10% Waymo Cash back on every trip, and even more during busy times.
Early Access: Be among the first to experience Waymo in new cities, as we expand.
Flexible Cancellations: Peace of mind with up to five free cancellations per month.
---
ok so just amazon prime for waymo. its alright but i feel like they had the chance to go REALLY high end with like a $300/month plan that people will still pay for because supply is so limited. instead they went mass consumer with a name like "Premier". eh.
(sorry waymo person reading this i know what its like to name a thing and regret it)
What’s up with the fake review?
> I get privacy, time back, …
Yea you get "privacy" in a car kitted with the most advanced 360 degree camera system in the interior and exterior of the vehicle. Waymo PR team unhinged
> I'm not obligated to talk to someone that I don't want to talk to
I’m wondering what we lose as a society if people never have to be in even a mildly uncomfortable situation. There’s a book called The Comfort Crisis about this topic.
EDIT: The full quote is “I get privacy, time back, a safe ride, and I'm not obligated to talk to someone that I don't want to talk to.”
In her quote she chose to separate safety and having a conversation with a stranger as two separate issues.
Inside San Francisco, using public transit except for directly between BART stops is incredibly slow. For almost all journeys e-bikes dominate the speed discussion, and cars are second. The biggest constraint for us that made us take public transit is that our child was too young for a bike and we'd still only take it to Union Square.
I spent over a decade on a bicycle plus Muni/BART Fastpass and it's pretty good for the price if you're single and stay inside the city. As such a person I could crack open a book and a 15 min from Glen Park to Montgomery St. was the same as a 1 h from Montgomery to El Cerrito (the latter even preferable).
But the various policy choices popular in San Francisco (intentionally high labour usage, ill and violent people in public spaces, low cleaning capacity) do act against transit being a good choice. By comparison, I have family in Vancouver, BC where the politics are similar but the policy is different and the trains run very often and are fast (these are the most important things - made possible by removing labor from the equation) and are relatively clean. People will offer you a seat when you hop on with your stroller, elevators are functional and relatively clean, and it's overall a lot more usable as a family.
Or imagine that you work a professional travel job and you're flying to/from the airport on a weekly basis. Your employer will pay for your ride to the airport, so why would you take public transit? Now you're doing at least 3-4 taxi/uber/waymo rides a week.
How is this useful in any way? by definition it's a subscription for people already using the service in the (few) supported cities. If I use it in Denver, why would I care to have early access in Washington?
That's usually things like caltrain / muni. But I would definitely sponsor a $300/mo waymo subscription if it was like 20 rides a month.
https://oaklandside.org/2024/07/25/gig-will-shut-down-its-ca...
Can't even imagine what women go through.
> “I never got my driver's license, and I rely on Waymo to commute to an office every day," said Sarah Paige Roland, a Waymo rider in Phoenix. "I get privacy, time back, a safe ride, and I'm not obligated to talk to someone that I don't want to talk to. Adding cash back and priority pickups on top of that makes Premier a no-brainer for someone like me."
I get what they're trying to say, but their pitch boils down to: "use waymo if youre too stupid to get a DL and too antisocial to talk to people". Bit rough. They really could have done a lot better with this PR piece lol.
- Doordash wants you to subscribe
- AMC movies want you to subscribe
- Now Waymo wants you to subscribe
You can't buy anything now without being hassled for a subscription. I don't see any value here except for when they degrade the service for non-subscribers to make the priority pickups seem worth it.I recognize that this is a luxury product but I kind of laughed out loud at this testimonial. The amount of privilege you need to have to grow up and live in *Arizona* without ever learning how to drive is insane.
That may be causing other cities some caution.
-or- use Waymo if you don’t want to spend resources on owning and maintaining a car, and if you are part of the population that has or may feel too intimidated or unsafe to navigate a potentially adversarial conversation with someone more powerful than you, such as women.
It is the fact that you can't do anything without them being pushed down your throat that is infuriating. Every interaction with a company these days is an attempt to up-sell. When a small number of retail stores started that, I stopped doing business with them. Now they all do it.
I'd feel like I'm losing something by giving up that human interaction, such that it is.
Speaking personally, I don't see enough movies or do enough ride shares to want to subscribe to AMC or Waymo, but Doordash would make sense. Maybe it's OK for me to pay a higher price for the ~1 time per year I use those other services.
More typical of Christians so it kind of threw me off.
But anyway, a paid service shouldn't be starting that kind of conversation unless for some reason I started it and even then that'd make it just as uncomfortable for the driver.
My wife will not ride alone in Uber's because she's had one too many uncomfortable -> possibly dangerous situations.
This appears to be true for all of her friends as well.
It can be annoying to have to deal with irrational humans who make mistakes, but that really is just part of life! I'll take some cumbersome conversations over conducting my entire life via corporate app interfaces.
They need a technical solution for issues that a 10 year old can figure out.
Just wait till Google spins it off to private equity; it'll be barley running bits of vehicles patched together by the cheapest mechanics they can find.
Enjoy it while you can; I'd love to give it a go myself, but even though I live in a city where they are supposedly in commercial operation, I can't get one to either of the two houses on either side of town that I currently split my time between. I have a buddy who lives a few blocks from one of their zones who walked over just so he could try it out. As of now, our sub-standard, minimally-invested-in-this-century bus system is actually much better suited to my needs.
"Uber received over 400,000 sexual assault and misconduct reports between 2017 and 2022"
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/06/uber-liable-pay-8-5-million-...
400/mo or 5000/yr for not having to worry about all that plus never playing the "wait let's circle the block, maybe a spot has opened up" game... sounds tempting.
If you don’t like it, then change providers.
If all providers do it, then you must pay to avoid advertisements.
Or, complain to your elected government representatives.
What’s that? Your Chase/Amex credit card gives you a monthly/annual credit? Ok. No more complaints then.
It's less convenient, doesn't work nationally and isn't as fun?
i have a sports car and two motorcycles, and consequently, i did not buy a condo in the mission. instead, i bought a house by 19th street bart and my commute to the city is shorter than some of my coworkers who live half as far as me (by distance).
Assuming normal costs, you are looking $21-$22k not including taxes.
There is no way you are finding a car for $28k for just $400. Trust me.
I couldn't care less what people in the Philippines - one of the most gay-friendly countries in Asia - think of me through a camera stream.
Literally don't care. What I don't need is to be evangelised with whatever conspiracy theory or fringe religion my driver just joined the entire way back from JFK.
I once had a driver pick me up in downtown Seattle, and it turned out to be that he was driving for Uber as a tactic for his entrepreneurial venture developing antimicrobial and hydrophobic coating. He claimed to have applied it to the fishing boat from Deadliest Catch. He was specifically circling downtown to try to pick up someone who could get the ear of someone in Amazon's grocery division that he could pitch to (which I was not). At a red light in a nightmarish seven-way intersection, he took out a square of cheesecloth that had apparently had the coating applied, and attempted to demonstrate its effectiveness by pouring water onto it. It worked, and the water got all over his passenger seat and center console instead while the light turned green and cars behind us honked.
A few months later, Uber tried to match me with that same driver, and I cancelled it and walked instead. I have to imagine that if a guy with that level of high-preparation social ineptitude can stick around in their system, that the number of people making offhand inappropriate moves or remarks must be reasonably high.
In general, if you're removing a cost you pay for a thing when calculating TCO you're almost certainly no longer on the path to calculating anything that should be called TCO.
It'll probably make it another decade. Or two.
Cabin air filter is twice a year at $18 a filter (I replace them as soon as it smells weird)
Home electricity is cheap at least. (7¢/kw)
Source: https://www.pge.com/assets/pge/docs/account/rate-plans/resid...
But let's use your "worst case" scenario.
Worst case 300 mile EV charge (100%, during peak hours): about $50 Filling up a highly fuel efficient vehicle: about $40
Of course, if you only charge the EV to 80% (as is recommended, and more efficient), and only set it to charge it off-peak (as is normal), then the numbers are more like:
EV: $30 Gas: $40
As we scale and bring our fully autonomous ride-hailing service to more people across the globe, we continue to refine the Waymo experience and deliver more for our riders. You spoke, and we listened to how we can offer an even more elevated experience for you, our top riders. Introducing: Waymo Premier.
Waymo Premier is a new invite-only membership program built for those who rely on us most. For a monthly fee, members gain access to a suite of exclusive benefits designed to make their journey more seamless and rewarding:
Priority Pickups: Skip the line with prioritized matching
Ride Savings: Earn 10% Waymo Cash back on every trip, and even more during busy times.
Early Access: Be among the first to experience Waymo in new cities, as we expand.
Flexible Cancellations: Peace of mind with up to five free cancellations per month.
“I never got my driver's license, and I rely on Waymo to commute to an office every day," said Sarah Paige Roland, a Waymo rider in Phoenix. "I get privacy, time back, a safe ride, and I'm not obligated to talk to someone that I don't want to talk to. Adding cash back and priority pickups on top of that makes Premier a no-brainer for someone like me."
Waymo Premier costs $29.99 per month and will be initially offered to select riders in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. Members will have access to greater reliability and value that will travel with them from city to city. We’ll scale the program to offer Premier membership to riders in more cities where the Waymo app is available in the future.
Whether you're a daily commuter or a weekend explorer, Waymo Premier is our way of helping you get the most out of every ride. Ready to become a member? Keep an eye on your Waymo app for your exclusive invitation.