They barely pay the humans in the loop now, apparently. I don't see them lowering costs because of this but I guess we'll see.
It seems more likely that they'll keep the prices as they are and make some excuse about "shareholder value."
They've already acclimated two entire generations to paying crazy amounts for food delivery. Why would they start charging less?
Until there is competition, they'll keep feeding off of the fatted calf. And completion is likely a decade or more away.
That's why drivers try to take you off the platform and pay in cash/venmo
Absolutely
> Considering that they're the only autonomous car provider in operation, that curve will not be consumer-friendly.
Waymo+Doordash also competes against non-autonomous delivery.
Question is how many humans will forgo owning a car altogether once autonomous vehicles are ubiquitous.
Fun fact about Dave App's tipping. If you bring the value to zero you saw an animation of a kid's food being taken away from them.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/11/...
Or go from being an N car household to an N-1 car household.
Obviously you can already get delivery from Whole Foods, FreshDirect, etc., but it's expensive due to the drivers.
And public transport and bikeshares are great for transporting you, but not for trying to carry four or six bags of groceries along with you.
What are you talking about? What backwaters country is this? In many places in the world, people live literally on top of grocery stores, such law would be ridiculed until the law makers have to socially isolate themselves if they tried to come up with something so stupid.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2019/june/u-s-shoppers-...
The downtown/center of older cities may still have mixed use, and there have been changes happening in recent years to allow/build more apartments and mixed use areas, but, generally outside of the densest parts of the largest cities commercial and residential areas are required to be separate, with personal cars as the primary/only way to get between them.
This has been a bit of a self-reinforcing phenomenon, IMO, as car-first infrastructure puts people at the mercy of traffic congestion, and means that any apartment building or business in their vicinity will result in more cars passing through, more congestion, more competition for parking, as well as the presence of the large parking lots that cities mandate for any new construction, which themselves make it unpleasant to get around in any other way.
It's somewhat misleading to talk about distance-to-X in a lot of American places. I live less than a mile from the nearest grocery as the crow flies, but if I wanted to walk there I have to traverse my entire street to get to an exit road (as opposed to walking out my back gate; the whole back is fenced because the exit road is directly behind my house). Then I have to walk down a fairly busy one-lane-each-way road with no sidewalks or shoulders present (i.e., you're going to be walking in a shallow drainage ditch - hope it's not raining!) for a few hundred meters, cross two busy multilane roads, and walk across an unshaded parking lot.
My rural grocery store is 1.9 mi away. I tend to shop a few times a week, and only for what I need.
Generally one bag, mostly produce. Maybe a meat I’ll cook that day.
House size ranges from one to five. The only time I wind up with a full fridge is around holidays or when I have houseguests with food anxiety.
Really? Drivers only get paid 2 to 3 dollars per delivery from DoorDash and UberEats. These companies are predatory and pay the drivers less than it cost the drivers to deliver. So now these companies will assume all the costs instead of passing the cost down to the drivers? How does that make them more profitable? Maybe there’s some DoorDash or Uber eaters here that can explain my confusion.
Why would DoorDash want to assume all that responsibility when they have such a good legal scam against all their drivers right now? I call it a scam because DoorDash claims to not be taking the tips of drivers, but given the puny payouts per delivery the drivers lose money and time without the tips, so how can they claim they’re not taking the tips.
Assuming it's those little cooler-sized ones
Damn it's an entire car for a package? hmm maybe they combine people and food (points to head)
That'll be a new traveling salesman algorithm, the waymo doordash problem
Create a market segment where everything costs more for everyone, "employ" countless people -- usually on restrictive work visas and with a limited understanding of labour laws, rights, and protections -- to be the boots on the ground of the operation, pay those people so little that they drive and ride dangerously in traffic, bike lanes, and on sidewalks to eke out more money out of the system, get people used to paying $40 for a burger, and then just... automate the whole thing away?
This is an ethical no-win scenario for companies like Doordash in my mind, but it's one of their own making. Food delivery as a business catering to the general public needs to go away (with exceptions for meals on wheels-type operations serving the sick and the old who may otherwise not be able to get food on their own).
Sweet summer child, they know very well what they're doing. The instances I've interacted with employees at those companies, they know exactly what kind of future they're building towards, and most of them seem very eager to get there, regardless of existing regulations.
> Food delivery as a business catering to the general public needs to go away
Why though? There is clearly demand for it in some way. We've been doing food delivery to the general public for decades, is it the amount of selection that you're against or food delivery as a whole?
I agree that VC-funded startups that aim to basically crash industries because they're flush with cash, so they then can jack up prices should go away, but I don't see that linked with "Food Delivery" as a concept, we should be able to regulate one of them without getting rid of the other.
But if people are going to order food to go, is it better to have everyone driving to pick it up or better to have one driver picking up and delivering multiple orders at once?
I mean, in a world of finite resources and pollution, which is better?
Fewer horses, too!
There is nothing natural about driving a car. Nothing democratic about a driver in front ferrying one or two in the back, both knowing each will rate the other, one knowing they are working for a tip, all while managing a fleet of apps whose owners run datacenters to rip them off.
Human-driven cars were a deadly necessity. But like lead pipes and child labour, we’re better off past it.
It relates to economics. Do you think a central planner would swear off robotics because it feels dehumanizing?
This is a straw man. There are many shades of grey between big companies, fueled by cheap VC money, that wipe out taxi drivers associated in small companies by operating at loss for many years and a centrally planned economy.
People are trying to get from one place to another, not have a social experience. If they could teleport themselves they would.
If this technology really takes off in the next 5 to 10 years, we're going to see a lot of people without the employer of last resort. Eventually gig work might disappear completely. In a lot of cities you'll see people on electric bikes or scooters delivering food. If that's completely automated, sure it'll be a lot quicker and faster, but what's going to happen to people who depend on these jobs.
I don't think our economic system is ready for this. And I'm not talking about any particular country either, it's going to be a worldwide issue.
I don't doubt that we will have the same thing with all these new options. Maybe the social baggage won't be there but there will be weird new things that pop up...
As well as the prices, wait times and ubiquity.
I’m not saying it’s a panacea. But I don’t think most people want to go back to when Uber was only black cars.
Enjoy it while it lasts. Uber/Lyft were far cheaper than other options when they launched until they put everything else out of business, then jacked up the price.
Either way, we're going to see a lot more of this. More and more of the gig economy being automated away.
If Waymo were launching in Minneapolis I'd be surprised and delighted. But this is just more of the same.
Your argument would definitely apply in 2015. Not so much in 2025.
When were you last in a Waymo? I use them almost exclusively in Phoenix.
> they stick to the cheat regions
Do you think it doesn’t snow in Atlanta?
Snow is not a problem. Snow that stays is a problem. Atlanta doesn't get snow that stays. Waymo is noticbly absent from Buffalo after their one prior attempt.
Tell me more about how the 92” of snow my town got last winter leaves me ignorant.
> Snow is not a problem. Snow that stays is a problem
Snow used to be a problem! It isn’t anymore because it’s solved. My Subaru can keep lane using radar alone, following the car in front of me, in a blizzard.
> Waymo is noticbly absent from Buffalo after their one prior attempt
They’re also noticeably absent from Chula Vista [1].
Also, I know I don’t understand snow, but maybe the folks in Denver do [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
[2] https://denverite.com/2025/09/02/denver-waymo-pilot-project-...
Phoenix just broke rainfall records two days in a row and regularly gets dust storms. Those are both challenging conditions for drivers.
Obviously the cars can drive themselves on public streets, but how do you go up to someone's house and put a burger on their doorstep?
Do you think these drivers currently run around with two to a car, one to keep the engine running while they go around the block while the other goes upstairs?
Fair enough. Not really an issue in Phoenix. Plenty of buildings (in San Francisco and Atlanta, to memory) require delivery to be dropped off at a centralized location. And there aren’t many high rises, or months of monsoon, in Phoenix.
Having to go outside significantly reduces the benefit of delivery. Now customers have to interrupt what they’re doing, make sure they look OK so the neighbors don’t see their underwear and bed hair, put on a jacket or raincoat in bad weather, possibly wait on 2 elevators, and pick up their food right next to their own car in the parking lot. In some cases, this could take five minutes. Customer realizes that they could just get in their car and drive to the restaurant at this point, so why order for delivery?
Makes no sense.
What? They’d stumble down in pyjamas. If they’re in a building that probably means exiting and re-entering a parking garage. Also, it’s Phoenix. Nothing is five minutes away—the urban plan is one of sprawl.
I agree it’s less convenient than door delivery. But against that is the cost of tipping and humans getting lost. For it is the fact that in many major cities, people routinely order food delivery despite being required by building policy to pick it up downstairs.
I only wanted to point out that The customers are getting less not more. And the companies will make less money because the automated cars are more expensive than drivers that are willing to take food for 2 to 3 dollars a delivery. If you fail to see that or recognize it, I’ll leave it at that.
I think plenty of Phoenicians will tip themselves to walk to the curb.
> the companies will make less money because the automated cars are more expensive than drivers
Disagree. The marginal cost for a late-night Waymo is probably already comparable to that of a driver, and that’s before we get to California’s Prop 22.
This is really interesting because if you have autonmous drivers, DoorDash doesnt really have a lever to lower prices except removing tipping.
Food delivery is something I truly have never understood. I have very rarely been in a situation where I was thinking about food and couldn't think of any nearby restaurants within walking distance (~30 minutes on foot). Why would I order if I could just walk, which is also more healthy anyway? Even if I was extremely busy, if I have time to eat I also have the time to get the food.
Cool? I’ve never quite gotten bumblebees.
Meanwhile, they continue to fly and apparently burrow. And Europeans buy tens of billions of dollars of food delivery services [1].
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/europe-online-food-delivery-m...
ChrisArchitect•2h ago