At current prices, Waymo may actually be generating operating profit with the current vehicle costs and opex. Driver 6 hardware and Ioniq 5 cars will cut the vehicle costs sharply. I don't think Waymo wants to make a big deal out of this because it would be disruptive, but they are either at the point or very near to it where they can undercut human powered ride hailing.
A big cost driver is invisible, at least once Tesla gets their safety monitor out of the vehicle, which is the ratio of safety monitors to vehicles. You need three shifts of safety monitors seven days a week. It adds up. Google wouldn't be expanding if they had to hire a building full of safety monitors.
Yep, I tend to think you're right about most of this. At some point we're going to find out how much a Waymo costs and that will be super telling because we don't really know how good or bad it looks financially because the cost of the car itself is (duh) so important to figuring that out.
A big cost driver is invisible, at least once Tesla gets their safety monitor out of the vehicle, which is the ratio of safety monitors to vehicles. You need three shifts of safety monitors seven days a week. It adds up. Google wouldn't be expanding if they had to hire a building full of safety monitors.