“Today the company is announcing that it’s testing fully autonomous trips, sans human driver, in Miami, and plans to do so in Orlando, Florida; Dallas; Houston; and San Antonio in the coming weeks.
For now, the only passengers will be Waymo employees. But the news is one of the final big milestones before the company offers rides to the public in those five cities, which it says it expects to do next year once all the necessary logistics are in place.”
“The five cities that are part of today’s announcement represent only a portion of those where Waymo has announced its intention to add service. Seven more—Denver, Detroit, Las Vegas, London, Nashville, San Diego, and Washington, D.C.—are “coming soon” but not yet ready to do without a human driver aboard. Yet another seven—Boston, Buffalo, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Tokyo—are in an earlier stage, where the company is driving and collecting data.”
This article was clearly written by someone who lives in London and has never been to SF, but read a few articles about Waymo from the last year or two before writing this.
As someone more on the software side as well, I’m inspired to take on something similar.
But more importantly, as someone who rented a windowless room for a year, I would have loved to make a smart light like this to wake up to in the morning.
Thankfully that's illegal where I live. I'm even tempted to suppress my own work here, because I don't want it to be used to unlock new levels of dystopic housing.
Comparing Waymo and Tesla here is a non-sequitur. Waymo is an autonomous taxi service. They literally are the driver. Tesla does not have an autonomous service where there is no human driver in control.
You'll have a significant upfront cost for the coop, fencing, feeders and other equipment. Around $1000-2000 or so. And presumably, you'll be buying baby chickens, which require their own special care. It takes about 6 months for a baby chicken to start laying eggs.
But once you do that, you can maybe get to a reasonable place. The upfront cost being ignored, at today's egg prices, you can basically break even.
I have 9 egg laying chickens. They go through about $30 of food per month. They need another $20 in bedding supplies. $50 / month basically. Plus I spoil them with meal worm treats, so add another $30 per month for that (but I'll ignore that in my numbers below).
In winter, I average about 5 eggs per day out of my 9 chickens. In summer, it's closer to 8 per day. So we'll assume the best case here.
8 per day * 30 days per month = 240 eggs
$50 per month supplies / 20 dozen eggs = $2.50 / dozen
So not bad overall. But in winter it's worse, and my costs are higher because I give them worms.
We can't eat through all the eggs though, so we try to find nice people/places to give them away (single moms, food banks, etc.).
Ultimately, raising chickens is just for fun. They are pets and enjoyable creatures. Highly recommend if you have the land for it (and no HOA rules).
It is worth considering how chicken exposure impacts your risk of contracting H5N1 and the state of current treatments, and likelihood of obtaining those treatments if you need them.
Yes, we agree. I meant in Jackson our billionaires either love driving, in which case they drive themselves, or don’t, in which case they fly straight in. The middle ground between those isn’t enough to found a market on.
For now, the only passengers will be Waymo employees. But the news is one of the final big milestones before the company offers rides to the public in those five cities, which it says it expects to do next year once all the necessary logistics are in place.”
“The five cities that are part of today’s announcement represent only a portion of those where Waymo has announced its intention to add service. Seven more—Denver, Detroit, Las Vegas, London, Nashville, San Diego, and Washington, D.C.—are “coming soon” but not yet ready to do without a human driver aboard. Yet another seven—Boston, Buffalo, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Tokyo—are in an earlier stage, where the company is driving and collecting data.”