🚗 Chamath Palihapitiya published an impressive study on how self-driving cars are changing the economics of transportation.
His subscription blog features very in-depth analyses - I recommend subscribing. I'm sure there's a full-time analyst behind these texts, digging into data with such a level of detail.
https://chamath.substack.com/p/autonomous-driving
The main thesis: by 2025, autonomous driving became commercially viable and started to change not only taxis but also freight, insurance, and urban infrastructure. Americans spend about 225 hours a year driving, and in 2025, there were over 36,000 traffic fatalities in the US.
Waymo has already driven 170 million miles without a driver and shows 92% fewer serious accidents than humans behind the wheel. By the end of 2025, the company completed 20 million paid rides and is now delivering 500,000 rides a week across 10 US cities - aiming for 1 million rides a week and 20+ cities (including London and Tokyo) by the end of 2026.
The economics are simple: currently, car ownership costs $1.10 per mile, while robotaxis need to drop to $0.25 per mile to become the dominant model. ARK Invest values this market at $11 trillion, and Goldman Sachs predicts that autonomous vehicles will account for 65% of US sales by 2040.
Tesla is taking a different path - cameras instead of lidars - and launched driverless robotaxis in Dallas, Houston, and Miami in 2026, although it is still far behind Waymo in scale (Morgan Stanley expects Tesla to have about 1,000 cars by the end of the year). Meanwhile, Aurora is targeting freight - 200+ driverless trucks by the end of 2026 in a $900 billion market.
Chamath believes the technology is ready, and now it's all about regulation.
#chamath_palihapitiya@rvnikita_blog #waymo@rvnikita_blog #tesla@rvnikita_blog #robotaxi@rvnikita_blog