Currently it cost DoorDash an Ubereats 2 to 3 dollars to send food to the front door of someone’s house. It takes about 20 to 30 minutes for that driver to form all the steps to do the delivery. This works out to $6 dollars per hour of driver time. The driver is paying insurance, gas, time, depreciation insurance, accident repairs, maintenance, and everything. DoorDash pays $144 per day for approximately 48 deliveries with a human driver.
Now let’s try to assess the automated car situation. Assuming each delivery is about 5 miles that works out to 240 miles per day for 48 deliveries. Most cars are useful for 100,000 miles so the vehicle should be able to deliver for about 416 days. Assuming it gets gas mileage of 30 miles per gallon and gas costs $4 per gallon (using gas for simplicity though these are probably electric) for $13,333 in fuel over the life of the vehicle. Maintenance for these vehicles will vary of course, but a reasonable estimate is $1000 per year for brakes, oil changes, etc. adding up to $1140 total over the life of the vehicle. There are other costs that will be required as well like parking for the car when it’s not in use, cleaning of the car outside and inside, software maintenance, etc which I am unable to estimate, but it won’t matter as you’ll see below.
Automated cars are likely to cost at least 60k each (being really generous here … see below) given current prices on cars.
Cost of vehicle - $60,000 / $200,000
Vehicle Maintenance – $1140
Fuel – $13,333
Insurance - $1000
Other costs???
Total automated driver - $75,473 / $215,473
* Found article that states Waymo vehicles cost $200,000 as of June 2025, but included the scenario where the cost of the car is $60,000 and human drivers are still less expensive. So even if the Waymo vehicles dropped to 1/3 the current cost which is not likely, they are still more expensive than human drivers.
“Waymo vehicles are equipped with numerous expensive sensors and can cost roughly $200,000, enough to buy five or six regular cars. As of May, there were just 1,500 Waymos operating in all its markets.”
Rough napkin calculations show that it’s not cheaper for the company to buy some brand new, super high-tech automobile that is unproven and requires tons of research and development to refine it to the point that it can’t even complete the complete task (pick up food at counter and delivering food to the door of the customer).
I think this assumption is incorrect "Most cars are useful for 100,000 miles so the vehicle should be able to deliver for about 416 days."
There are several reports of the older version waymo cars lasting >200k miles, that would double the cost of your human driver and make the low end more profitable.
I'd assume that the insurance waymo has to pay per car is much lower as the removal of human drivers and proof of XXX miles driven without incident would drastically reduce the risk to insure. I also think the economies of scale and 24/7 always on + improvements on iterations will do nothing but drive those costs down.
The company does it not because they think it will be cheaper but because if they DON'T do it, and something changes, someone else will eat their (delivered) lunch.
Even when it doesn’t accomplish the task and cost three times more than the current method? Seems like we’re far away from this working.
Don’t do what? They’re just buying Waymo cars and building a plug-in to send waypoints to the car from their delivery software system. Waymo did all the hard work.
Now let’s try to assess the automated car situation. Assuming each delivery is about 5 miles that works out to 240 miles per day for 48 deliveries. Most cars are useful for 100,000 miles so the vehicle should be able to deliver for about 416 days. Assuming it gets gas mileage of 30 miles per gallon and gas costs $4 per gallon (using gas for simplicity though these are probably electric) for $13,333 in fuel over the life of the vehicle. Maintenance for these vehicles will vary of course, but a reasonable estimate is $1000 per year for brakes, oil changes, etc. adding up to $1140 total over the life of the vehicle. There are other costs that will be required as well like parking for the car when it’s not in use, cleaning of the car outside and inside, software maintenance, etc which I am unable to estimate, but it won’t matter as you’ll see below.
Automated cars are likely to cost at least 60k each (being really generous here … see below) given current prices on cars.
Cost of vehicle - $60,000 / $200,000 Vehicle Maintenance – $1140 Fuel – $13,333 Insurance - $1000 Other costs??? Total automated driver - $75,473 / $215,473
* Found article that states Waymo vehicles cost $200,000 as of June 2025, but included the scenario where the cost of the car is $60,000 and human drivers are still less expensive. So even if the Waymo vehicles dropped to 1/3 the current cost which is not likely, they are still more expensive than human drivers.
“Waymo vehicles are equipped with numerous expensive sensors and can cost roughly $200,000, enough to buy five or six regular cars. As of May, there were just 1,500 Waymos operating in all its markets.”
https://sherwood.news/tech/as-the-race-for-autonomy-heats-up...
Total Human driver - 416 days x $144 = $59,904
Rough napkin calculations show that it’s not cheaper for the company to buy some brand new, super high-tech automobile that is unproven and requires tons of research and development to refine it to the point that it can’t even complete the complete task (pick up food at counter and delivering food to the door of the customer).