What Waymo's Data Reveals About Who Actually Rides Robotaxis

Everyone in autonomous driving asks when the technology will work. William "Billy" Riggs asks the harder question: what happens after it does, when you have to fit it into a city that wasn't built for it?

Daniel sits down with William, professor at the University of San Francisco and Director of the Autonomous Vehicles and the City Initiative, to challenge ten years of industry narrative. His thesis: AVs behave less like software and more like infrastructure. The hard part was never the driving stack. It's operations, integration, and the politics of the street.

Drawing on two of the only academic rider studies inside commercial Level 4 services (Cruise and Waymo), a UC Davis white paper on why curb management keeps failing, and a working paper on how autonomy actually scales, this conversation reframes what the industry has been getting wrong.

In this episode:

• Why AVs are infrastructure, not software, and why that distinction changes everything
• The data on who actually rides robotaxis
• Why riders don't choose AVs for safety, even though the industry sells safety
• Why operations, not AI, is the true bottleneck to scale
• The capital mismatch that broke the industry: venture money chasing infrastructure returns
• Why the curb is the most politically immovable problem in urban mobility
• The B2C vs. B2B vs. B2G shift, and why the consumer robotaxi app may be a losing position
• Whether the US venture model or the European government model wins
  
  00:00 - Introduction: Unlocking real-world insights in autonomous driving.

  00:14 - William Riggs’s background and unique perspective.

  00:32 - The True Challenge of Autonomous Mobility: Systems Integration & Political Economy.

  01:18 - The importance of fitting AVs into urban systems beyond software.

  02:02 - Unpacking the theory of how AVs scale through infrastructure, street, and money.

  02:32 - Why vehicle technology alone isn’t enough for successful scaling.

  03:52 - The role of institutions, city policies, and the vehicle-infrastructure relationship.

  04:40 - Vehicles as infrastructure components, not just software.

  05:16 - Rethinking venture capital’s focus: From core tech to systemic support.

  07:45 - Operations over AI: Why fleet management, maintenance, and edge-case handling matter most.

  09:18 - The misperception about safety and the real user motivations.

  11:21 - Demand and mode shift findings from studies with Cruise and Waymo.

  13:48 - The role of AVs in reducing car ownership and expanding transit.

  16:20 - How AVs serve underserved populations and fill transit gaps.

  21:36 - Induced demand versus latent demand in AV mobility.

  25:21 - Passenger safety perceptions and industry narratives.

  30:39 - The significance of the Waymo Transit Credit pilot and city collaboration.

  36:49 - Urban curb management’s political and infrastructural dimensions.

  42:37 - The curb as infrastructure and governance challenge.

  49:13 - The evolving capital landscape: From venture to private and public investment.

  53:35 - Market timing: Where the industry and government strategies are misaligned.

  59:23 - Scaling challenges: Integration, business models, and operational maturity.

  62:53 - European vs. American models: Hybrid approaches for durable autonomous ecosystems.

  64:49 - Critical decisions for 2026 and beyond: Infrastructure, regulation, and public-private roles.

  65:12 - Final thoughts: The future of trusted, scalable autonomous mobility