Depends where you live. In SF, parking alone is more than $300/mo if you have to pay for a spot. Also, many companies subsidize Waymo rides for employees as part of their commuter benefits.
You can probably infer the average number of active cars from trips and utilization metrics, which are out there (at least for California I believe they report this).
E.g. 450,000 trips/week * 15 min/trip / 0.56 loaded:empty miles / (24760) ~= 1200.
I think some of the external investors have board seats, so the outside people do get a (small) say in things. And to your point, that's probably also a good thing for avoiding another Stadia mistake.
Building out depot and charging infrastructure and working with city officials are both slow processes, so I imagine you'll see them prioritize spreading out to a lot of cities first, in the most profitable areas (downtown), then expand the service area in each of them over time as they get more cars.
> People say yes it drives, but it drives like a rookie
I think you just made this up. Almost every anecdote I've heard, and I spend a lot of time in two cities where it's launched, is that "it drives better than most humans". Which is exactly how I would characterize it too. It doesn't drive exactly like a human. But for every subtle human behavior it doesn't do, there are probably several things it does much more skillfully than a human.
European cities have lots of taxis. Same with Asian cities. They will obviously have AVs in the future. I'm not sure why you think they should be mutually exclusive with transit.
It's a "joke" (I wouldn't call it that, but it's a vastly different product) because you have to pay attention to the road at all times.
You don't live in a Waymo city, so I understand. A lot of people who don't live in a Waymo city don't really get it.
Waymo is a completely different product than FSD. It's a robot that comes and drives you from point A to point B. You can do whatever you want while it's driving, such as take a nap or work on your laptop.
How much money they've spent in the past is irrelevant. That money all came from investors, in exchange for a stake in the company. It never needs to be "paid back". Besides which, those investors have earned all those funds back already, and then some (on paper).
All that matters at this point is how much money they'll lose/earn in the future. There are no shortage of investors willing to put money into this effort, and they're growing exponentially, so there won't be any pressure for them to turn overall profitable for several more years.