[kajecounterhack]

Higher willingness to pay does not matter unless the market is segmented. So if the tech gets cheaper, unless they explicitly make an expensive "oft-cleaned" tier and a less expensive "less-oft-cleaned" tier, what matters is average willingness to pay.

"Once the tech becomes cheap, expect the car quality and cleanliness to go down" -- here you were positing that the _average_ willingness to pay for cleanliness will go down enough to affect things, barring any market segmentation. And I disagree:

1. You're assuming that the reason _why_ Waymo's cars tend to be cleaner than your typical Uber / Lyft is to satisfy a wealthy clientele. This elides a big reason for the existing gap: Uber / Lyft drivers aren't professionally managed. You don't directly pay for your Uber driver's interior car cleaning when you buy a ride, but the salary of folks managing Waymo's fleets is factored directly into pricing. Even if Waymo's clientele were less wealthy, you have to clean your cars and pass the cost on to all users. Additionally, interior cameras are pretty motivating to not mess up cars!

2. You're assuming that the cars today don't get maximum utilization, and that with more utilization you'd see dirtier cars. This is a pretty bad assumption - the cars are being utilized about as heavily as you can hope. In SF for most of Waymo's existence demand has outstripped supply. And the cars are still very clean :)

So if the usage is the same, and peoples' expectations for cleanliness are the same, why would rate of cleaning change as time goes on for the service?

The only thing I can think is if no reasonable alternatives to Waymo arise - in that case, cleanliness could go down but it has less to do with the clientele / willingness to pay, and more to do with competition / monopoly.

As another note, I just don't see how cleaning-based market segmentation would make good operational sense. Is cleaning the car slightly less frequently really gonna help the bottom line? Is the price differential big enough at single-ride scale? Do even rental car companies do this for their fleets - the cheap ones still seem to clean their cars.

[jessriedel]

> Higher willingness to pay does not matter unless the market is segmented.

Incorrect.

> unless they explicitly make an expensive "oft-cleaned" tier and a less expensive "less-oft-cleaned" tier,

That's exactly what I'm saying would happen. We already have it with Uber Black.

> You're assuming that the cars today don't get maximum utilization, and that with more utilization you'd see dirtier cars.

No, I'm not assuming that.

> As another note, I just don't see how cleaning-based market segmentation would make good operational sense

Again, Uber Black.

[kajecounterhack]

> That's exactly what I'm saying would happen. We already have it with Uber Black.

But I'm saying we _don't_ have that for Waymo, and it's very unlikely to happen, for many reasons. A big reason is simply that managing a fleet in heterogeneous fashion as you're describing (different cleaning schedules for the cars) doesn't really make sense IRL. It's a purely imagined scenario on your part.

> Incorrect.

Pray tell how I can pay for a cleaner car when there's only one option, car or no car?

> No, I'm not assuming that.

Then please explain how cars would get dirtier as the service scales up? If today is already seeing the cars at full utilization, barring a cost-cutting measure that determined that cleaning less frequently would be a significant cost savings (which is a big assumption on your part), then we should be seeing roughly how clean the cars will be into perpetuity.

> Again, Uber Black.

Uber Black achieves higher standards for cleaning by farming that out to the people renting out their personal vehicles. The drivers are incentivized to clean the cars more (than UberX drivers) to get more expensive fares.

But again, fleet management companies already do this for _all_ their cars. So for Waymo this is moot.