15% off membership for Easter! Learn more. Close

What are the estimated number of “incidents” that could be reported by users of Waymo in the SF Bay Area?  

Asked at Google
1.2k views
Answers (2)
crownAccess expert answers by becoming a member

You'll get access to over 3,000 product manager interview questions and answers

badge Bronze PM

First to define the scope, we'll focus on monthly incidents. Secondly, let's think of this as a question in the future, in which waymo and the driverless industry is more developed and not limited to only pilto testing cars as it is now. Lastly by incident we will understand the event in which a user files a report regarding an ongoing or past ride in which something happened (crash, car stopped responding, etc).

Number of incidents could be calculated as (incident rate) times the (total number of waymo rides in a month).

Monthly Waymo Rides can be calculated as (monthly driverless rides in the Bay Area) times (Waymo's market share).

Monthly driverless rides could be calculated as monthly taxi/on demand transportation rides in Bay Area times the percentage of potential rides to be executed by driverless cars.

SF Bay area has around 8M population which we can split in categories regarding daily taxi/ride usage:

  1. Heavy users, who ask for a ride aprox. 4 times a day. Let's say they are 20% of total population in tha area
  2. Regular users, People who ask for a ride as part of their daily commute and regularly in the weekends. 2 rides a day. Let's say they represent 30% of population.
  3. Ocasional users: People who ask for rides only on certain times such as social activities or in the weekends. 1 ride a day. 30% of the population.
  4. Non users: People who never ask for rides. They use their own car, walk everywhere or are not in the age range. the last 20% of the population.
So the avg. daily ride for a Bay area citizen would be: 4*.2+2*.3+1*.3+0*.2=.8+.6+.3 = 1.7 rides daily. We will round to 1.5 for simplification.
 
The daily rides in the area for the total population would then be = 1.5*8M = 12M daily rides. 
That would give us 360M monthly rides.
 
Now, let's say that initially only 1% of  the total rides asked in the SF area would correspond to a driverless service. That would make 3.6M driverless rides a month.
 
Let's say that waymo would have 80% of the driverless market share, that would give us around 3M waymo rides a month.
 
Waymo would not release their service if they havent testes their driverless experience in many many situations. So we could assume that 0.1% of the rides would be reported as an incident.
 
That would give us a final answer of 3,000 incidents reported each month.

 

Access expert answers by becoming a member
1 like   |  
Get unlimited access for $12/month
Get access to 2,346 pm interview questions and answers to give yourself a strong edge against other candidates that are interviewing for the same position
Get access to over 238 hours of video material containing an interview prep course, recorded mock interviews by expert PMs, group practice sessions, and QAs with expert PMs
Boost your confidence in PM interviews by attending peer to peer mock interview practices, group practices, and QA sessions with expert PMs
badge Bronze PM
# of Waymo related incidents per month = # of Waymo trips per month(1) * Incident rate(2)

# of Waymo trips per month (2) = # of Waymo trips per day (3)* 30

# of Waymo trips per day(3) = # of cab trips(4) * Market share for Waymo(5)

# of cab trips in SFO/day(4) = (Heavy users * 4 + Regular users * 2 + Occasional users * 1 + Non-Users * 0)

# of cab trips in SFO/day(4)= 0.3 * 5M * 4  + 0.3 * 5M * 2 + 0.3 * 5M * 1 + 0 = 2.1 trips per person per day = 10.5M trips per day

Assuming Waymo price points lower than competitors, it could have around 70% market share in driverless category

# of waymo trips per day(3) = 10.5M * 70% * 1% (driverless market share) = 70k

# of waymo trips in a month (2) = 70k * 30 = 2.1M trips

# of Waymo incidents per month = 2.1M * 0.1% (Incident rate) = 2100
Access expert answers by becoming a member
0 likes   |  
Get unlimited access for $12/month
Get access to 2,346 pm interview questions and answers to give yourself a strong edge against other candidates that are interviewing for the same position
Get access to over 238 hours of video material containing an interview prep course, recorded mock interviews by expert PMs, group practice sessions, and QAs with expert PMs
Boost your confidence in PM interviews by attending peer to peer mock interview practices, group practices, and QA sessions with expert PMs
Get unlimited access for $12/month
Get access to 2,346 pm interview questions and answers to give yourself a strong edge against other candidates that are interviewing for the same position
Get access to over 238 hours of video material containing an interview prep course, recorded mock interviews by expert PMs, group practice sessions, and QAs with expert PMs
Boost your confidence in PM interviews by attending peer to peer mock interview practices, group practices, and QA sessions with expert PMs