Waymo’s Quickly Taking More Market Share Than I Expected

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To be honest, I hadn’t thought a lot about Waymo’s market share in the cities it operates in. I just figured it’s still fairly small and niche as it works hard to improve its software and hardware. However, it turns out Waymo is getting a lot more business than I expected.

I know that we report on total trips provided and total miles driven from time to time here, and they are always impressive figures, but it’s hard to really judge much looking at large numbers. That doesn’t let us judge how much market share the company has unless we have an absurd knowledge of the taxi industry in our heads. So, I didn’t know — and it hadn’t even crossed my mind — that Waymo’s market share had risen as much as it had.

Venture capital firm A16z’s Alex Immerman reportedly indicated that Waymo had scooped up 22% of the San Francisco rideshare market by last November, equal to Lyft and eating into Uber’s lead. More than one-fifth of the rideshare market?! Already as big as Lyft in San Francisco?!

Data from YipitData also indicates that Waymo is getting a much faster start in new cities it’s entering. In Austin, it reportedly had more than an 80% faster start than in San Francisco (looking at the first 27 days). That is to be expected, though, as the company was at a much earlier stage of development and capability when it starting providing fully driverless, paid rides in San Francisco than it was when it did so in Austin. Nonetheless, it’s good to see that confirmed. I expected the DC, Miami, and Atlanta rollouts will be even faster than the Austin one again.

But, really, when you consider all of that, how long until Waymo has 20–25% of the rideshare market in those cities? Or even how long until it has +30% market share? And how about we throw on the next 5–10 cities Waymo will enter? Things are getting big and significant quickly.

Every account I see of Waymo from first-time riders is that they love it. It’s calm, peaceful, clean, and enjoyable. So, it’s no surprise the service is becoming popular fast. Aside from stealing customers from human-driven ride-hailing companies, I imagine there are people who didn’t use such services who feel comfortable using Waymo and enjoying the privacy of the ride and no social pressure of any sort.

I’m eager to see how much and how fast Waymo grows in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Miami, Atlanta, and Washington, DC. Probably even more so, though, I’m very eager to see what cities it provides services in next. When will it enter New York City? When will it enter Chicago? When will it enter Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Gainesville, and other cities large and small across the South, Southwest, and rest of the country? Also, will it have limits to what size cities it enters? And when will Waymo vehicle be willing to go from one city to another — for example, Orlando to Miami?

There are numerous questions to have answered, but at least the company is now providing service beyond Phoenix and we’re seeing how fast geographic expansion, customer uptake, and market share can grow.