Waymo could be much better at driving but without a low cost sensor strategy they can’t make money in a market that will immediately become commodity priced.
Reaching huge scale needs the right market strategy as well as good supply chain.
SpaceX has a clever strategy of exploiting their first mover advantage in cheap launch to create the first cheap satcom system. They will suck up so much of the available revenue from that market that the next movers will have trouble getting sufficient investment.
If what you are saying is true, why would Waymo not then pivot to a cheaper sensor system like Tesla? They have extensive experience with deep learning and plenty of training data. Surely this only buys Tesla a few years of lead time?
You seem to demonstrate what my point that Tesla maximalists assume a temporary lead becomes a permanent one and competitors just give up.
Reaching huge scale needs the right market strategy as well as good supply chain.
SpaceX has a clever strategy of exploiting their first mover advantage in cheap launch to create the first cheap satcom system. They will suck up so much of the available revenue from that market that the next movers will have trouble getting sufficient investment.