I agree that 1.1B isn't that much given the potential size of the market (and given the size of Google's profits, it's a surprisingly small bet they've made).
But how do you arrive at the conclusion that Google is way ahead? I cannot buy a Google car with self-driving capabilities. I can't even buy a car from any other manufacturer with Google's self-driving software in it. I can buy several other cars with some degree of self-driving tech in them, most notably Tesla, but also Volvo and Audi and others.
Already now, you have tens of thousands of Teslas driving around in either self-driving mode or in what is in essence a "recording" mode where they record and simulate. They drive in all kind of traffic, roads, rules, weather, light etc.
Meanwhile, you have a few hundred Waymobiles mostly driving around the perfect, dry and pristine Northern Californian roads with 25 mph. They have merely logged in 3M miles in almost 10 years. That's the equivalent of 10,000 Teslas driving 10 miles per day for a month. In a couple of years you will have a million Teslas driving on the roads. And you probably still just have a few hundred Google cars driving around engineers.
Google is losing the number game with its boutique approach. Waymo is WayBehind.
But how do you arrive at the conclusion that Google is way ahead? I cannot buy a Google car with self-driving capabilities. I can't even buy a car from any other manufacturer with Google's self-driving software in it. I can buy several other cars with some degree of self-driving tech in them, most notably Tesla, but also Volvo and Audi and others.
Already now, you have tens of thousands of Teslas driving around in either self-driving mode or in what is in essence a "recording" mode where they record and simulate. They drive in all kind of traffic, roads, rules, weather, light etc.
Meanwhile, you have a few hundred Waymobiles mostly driving around the perfect, dry and pristine Northern Californian roads with 25 mph. They have merely logged in 3M miles in almost 10 years. That's the equivalent of 10,000 Teslas driving 10 miles per day for a month. In a couple of years you will have a million Teslas driving on the roads. And you probably still just have a few hundred Google cars driving around engineers.
Google is losing the number game with its boutique approach. Waymo is WayBehind.