Waymo are working towards Tokyo as well. I'm worried. Living in here, I've noticed that the taxi industry acts as an unintentional social support system. Many taxi drivers are in-between jobs or stages in life, or simply didn't fit in to the corporate life. It doesn't pay well, but it's a decent job all things considered.
I worry the death of the taxi industry means even less avenues for these people to escape to.
Of course the argument here is "well Japan should fix the corporate situation" but the current prime minister seems to be hellbent on the opposite. I think this will suck for a lot of people.
As AI becomes more and more capable and integrated into our lives, we will see this across many industries.
In theory, as things get cheaper to produce, business profits should rise and governments should be able to raise more taxes. So the government then has more means to provide goods and services for free to people who need them.
It's the snake eating it's tail. For business profits to rise, people need to to have disposable income. If you replace enough people with AI, the average disposable income comes down to a point that businesses can't be profitable.
We are already seeing a localized version of this with restaurants in large cities.
That's true locally but not globally - it means the economy will increasingly shift to serve those who still have a reason to bargain with each other, which will be the owners of the AI and other useful capital.
For business profits to rise, people need
to to have disposable income
Does it matter, if the business pays employees who then use their salary to buy goods from the business or if the government collects taxes and uses that to pay for the goods? The government could also give the taxes to the people, so they have disposable income.
Imagine an island with two people on it and there is one tree that grows apples. And every other day, one of the two people climbs the tree and picks apples so they both have something to eat. Then the next day, the other person owes to climb on the tree because they are in debt to the first person.
Now, let's say one day, one of them discovers, hey, we can just give the tree a kick and the apples fall down on their own!
With the perspective you are proposing, the other one would have to say: Oh my God, don't do it! We will be out of work and starve!
Tax rates for wealthy folks are what, 10%? It makes a big difference if the majority of money that is made is distributed to the people via salaries, or whether it's profits and only 10% makes its way to the people.
I'd also love to see Waymos more in the countryside: _there_ calling a cab is annoyingly expensive, financially impractical, while "granny" and "pops" are having a hard time driving around without help.
I have high hopes for a positive social impact of self-driving cars out there.
Doesn't Tokyo have very low unemployment? According to Wikipedia: Japan 2.5%, Singapore 3.2%, USA 4.1%, EU 5.2%.
I expect Tokyo is probably even lower than the national average. Visiting just as a tourist it seems like Japan is quite good at creating, I don't want to say bullshit jobs, but perhaps not-that-necessary jobs? Jobs which mainly serve to give something to do to (usually) elderly. My understanding was that the idea is to make them feel to be a contributing part of the society(?)
I mean all the people controlling the pedestrians or acting like "human signs" and such.
Don't make the mistake to think these jobs are just there to keep bored retirees active. The basic old age pension (kokumin nenkin - for sole-proprietors and people who have worked in non-permanent positions or small companies) is significantly below the poverty line at 70,600¥ per month -- that's $450 and that's if you've worked for 40 years without any gaps.
The vast majority of old people working these jobs, e.g. construction site security, do so because they would likely starve without it.
State pensions everywhere tend to assume home ownership. I haven't been to Japan since they started doing wild funny money stuff, so I don't know what that's doing to local prices/economies, but not that long ago $450 + home ownership would have been completely fine in many areas.
Due to its aging population and lack of mass immigration, Japan has a desperate labor shortage in many fields.
I don't think taxi driving in Tokyo is one of them (because, as noted, the qualifications needed are pretty minimal), although eg bus drivers are in extremely short supply.
I have to admit I haven't taken a taxi in Tokyo but my impression was that it was a fairly high-end service akin to London black cabs and relatively pricey.
A basic commuter car costs over S180,000( US135,000) due to a compulsory 10-year quota license (COE/certificate of entitlement) that alone costs S$100,000+, plus registration taxes scaling up to 320% of the car's base value. Total running costs (tolls, parking, road tax) easily add S1,000–S2,000+ per month.
Singapore is so small though and cabs are cheap and I never needed a car. I can see why Waymo will be very attractive.
~$100,000 every 10 years is expensive, but I think even in a lot of countries with good public transport, there would be a large number of people who would consider paying $1,000 a month to be able to have a car if that was the only way to have one. It seems to me as though a lot families share a car quite widely too.
Even in countries without an expensive on-road tax, people do often choose to pay more than $10,000 a year in depreciation cost, rather than the option of buying a car that has already gone through the early, rapid depreciation. People also choose to get a car loan, again increasing the cost. I'm fairly uninformed whether the interest on those is significant.
Of course, the COE is in addition to depreciation and maintenance, and those are both also expensive in Singapore. Plus people buy the cars through loans. And, excluding everything I've said above, the cars themselves are very expensive to buy!
As an example, a 2.0L e:HEV Honda Civic is US$195,000 including the COE, so approximately US$90,000 without it. Looking on the US Honda site, it looks like the same car is under US$33,000. There must some on-road taxes in the US, and difference in specs, but that's a big difference in price, in addition to the ~$100,000 COE.
Even knowing they're expensive, there's something I still can't get over, seeing a 6-figure price across the windscreen of a base model (and knowing you don't get to take off any zeros when doing a currency conversion to what you're used to).
If you are an American, you have to start looking into the housing deduction to make your taxes work since the foreign tax credit doesn’t go very far in Singapore (and you need the FTC after the foreign earned income credit caps).
> You save so much on income tax in Singapore, but consumption is expensive.
It depends on what you are consuming. Sins like driving, alcohol, smoking and gambling are expensive. But the daily essentials aren't all that expensive, especially eating out starts very low.
> People also choose to get a car loan, again increasing the cost.
Sorry, could you please explain how car loans increase the cost?
> Of course, the COE is in addition to depreciation and maintenance, and those are both also expensive in Singapore. Plus people buy the cars through loans. And, excluding everything I've said above, the cars themselves are very expensive to buy!
In a sense, all these other costs don't really matter: if they increased (or dropped) by a dollar, in equilibrium the winning CoE bid would drop (respectively increase) by a dollar.
I said I never needed a car there :) I can get anywhere by cab in like < 30 mins so I never saw the need to have one. However there are plenty of ultra rich people living there and also many driving luxury cars. It's also a status symbol there(Credit card/Condo/Car).
In the 80s and 90s when the housing market was more immature, I believe condos and landed property were around the same price, and condos were seen as somewhat more prestigious because it came with private facilities.
despite the convenience of a well-run public transport system and uber-like services, the ease and freedom of owning your own transport is still hard to beat, and evidently worth the ~75k dollar COE. it removes the walk from bus/subway stations under the tropical/sun, humidity; and the wait (typically 5-10min) of waiting for your uber/taxi driver to showup and enduring the uber car smell (often heavily scented for some reason and triggers my allergic reaction) and someone else's music. and once you have children a car is almost a must.
Yes. And the Uber-like services and traditional taxis also need to bid for CoE.
I never had a problem with the driver's music in Singapore: usually they just play the bland local radio, or you can ask them to turn it off. Smell: sometimes a problem when you get a smoker. I guess some try to mask that with heavy scents?
For me the worst is that the local taxi uncles tend to pump the gas pedal. That's nausea inducing.
About the wait for the cab: usually you wait in the mall or at home etc, where you can have shelter from the sun and aircon.
Having your own car is convenient, especially with kids, since you can keep stuff in the car. But having to find parking all the time is also annoying.
A lot of people get a car when they have kids as taking grab with a car seat can be unwieldy. Also, COE wasn’t always $100K, many people are still on legacy COE when it was $30-$50K
One note, taxis are exempt from car seat laws and you can book them on demand via grab or the taxi company apps. That's what we did, it's a slight risk but so is life.
COE was around 30K in the first year of COVID. Not exceptionally long ago. We have a continental car we bought at the end of 2020 with a 41.5K COE; we paid less in total than what a base-model Corolla costs nowadays.
Really? I would have expected CoEs to be roughly evenly staggered.
Also keep in mind that when lots of CoEs expire at the same time, you'll also have more demand in the market from those people whose CoE just expired, but who still want a car.
The utility of a car in singapore is very different from other places. Yes, a car will get you faster from point A to point B in singapore when compared to public transport. But you can get a private hire car or a taxi which is just as fast and is probably much more convenient.
For many people in Singapore, a car's real utility is to signal status. More often than not, this status gets you real-life benefits. Such as increased dating success.
Yes, because when adjusted to car ownership costs, the young have a lower purchasing power when compared to the older generation at the same age back then.
I'm not sure that's a good lens to look through: the total number of cars in Singapore is fixed, and ownership cost adjusts (via the CoE auction) to balance supply and demand.
So there's no drop in total car ownership to explain: that one is held fixed. What we'd need to explain is why comparatively more older people and fewer younger people drive.
Singapore residents are not limited to one car. There's a lot of regional ultra rich in Singapore, and it's not unusual for them to have half a dozen or more cars, all of which count against the total cap.
Singapore's population has exploded in the past 20 years, almost doubling due to immigration. Native birth rate has collapsed.
Many relatively wealthy foreign individuals have moved to Singapore, disproportionately middle aged and above. These folks also compete in buying car quotas. They can also buy more than one car. Their demand is more inelastic.
Younger folks, local or foreign born are priced out.
For Singapore's boomers, success once meant the 5 Cs: cash, car, credit card, condominium and country club. For today's young Singaporeans, these no longer define success.
The price is high because there is sustained demand.
Hah! No but seriously. For a variety of reasons, owning a car in Singapore is a step change in QoL.
Infrastructure reasons:
- abundant parking at destinations (e.g. malls), home (HDB flats, condominiums) due to fairly generous car park lot mandates. IIRC, HDBs, where 85% of Singaporeans live, have until fairly recently had a 1:1 unit:lot ratio. Similarly for condominiums. A lot of these are progressively being scaled down especially near train stations, but buildings and giant multi storey parking lots are fixed infrastructure that will be around for decades. Abundant parking will be available for decades still.
- roads are wide and well maintained and well connected.
The experience:
- because the number of cars on the road are controlled through the COE system, the experience of driving is good. We get slow traffic but it is extremely rare that we get the kind of multi-hour jams that other countries experience.
- the door-to-door experience saves tons of time. In public transport, I walk (7m), wait for the train (3m), sit on the train (36m), get out at the interchange and walk to another platform (2m), wait for the train (2m), sit on the train (12m), exit and walk to my destination (11m). Total time: 1h14m. In a car, I walk to my car (2m), drive to my destination (35m), walk from the car park to my destination (1m). Total time: 38m. x2 for the return trip, and the car saves you a whole hour a day.
- the public transport experience is not so good if you have a family or are disabled. Don't even mention cyclists, culturally we spit on them here.
The status:
- it's true, the car is a status symbol. You don't know it until you get into conversations where driving a "mere BMW" as opposed to a mercedes is looked down on, or when someone mentions that driving a hatch is "not appropriate" (to station). Sedans are still popular here because they're "executive". Yes, these are all real conversation points I've been in.
Combine all of the above and owning a car in Singapore means you save tons of time, is technically "affordable" after loans, and you get to feel like you made it. So there's huge pressure to get a car. And once you're hooked, it is very difficult to give it up.
Then you have other reasons, like Taxis and Grab compete with individuals for the COE, and parents who "made it" in the boom years buying cars for their kids, and foreign money coming in. But I don't know how big these effects are.
Everyone says that but I've had the opposite experience, possibly due to my location (near Orchard Rd). Can easily pay $15 to essentially go around the corner.
I’ve been travelling to singapore for the last 15 years, my gut view is cabs are far more expensive today than they were 10 years ago even after adjusting for inflation. Maybe it’s just incorrect memories - rates don’t seem to have increased that much.
I love walking - checking distance tracking on my phone, I walked over 20km in a day a couple of weeks ago. But when it's hot in Singapore, the distances I don't want to walk can become crazy-short at times.
I'm hesitating to judge someone taking a ride-share around the corner. Among many other reasons, I can imagine scenarios where someone would think it worth paying to not arrive a sweaty mess.
I walk 99% of the time. By around the corner, I mean a 10 - 20 min walk (5 min drive in good traffic), which will easily get you drenched in sweat depending on the weather. If I'm headed to a dinner or gathering that requires a bit of dressing up (shirt and trousers), walking isn't really an option.
My next trip to singapore is the end of next week. I’m staying a mile from the office, Apple predicts it’s 89% at 0730 but will drop to 75% during the day, and back upto 80% after dinner.
Singapore says it likes to be car-lite, and makes cars correspondingly expensive, but the government doesn't seem to truly walk the talk.
Singapore uses about 11%[1] of its extremely limited land area for land transport (primarily, roads, since all railways are urban passenger rapid transit and not freight). I believe this is too much. 10-13 lane stroads are not uncommon, especially at junctions[2]. Singapore needs more light rail, trams, and permanent bus lanes with bus priority signals, as well as considerably more traffic calming measures in residential neighbourhoods.
Don't get me wrong, its mass rapid transit story is superb, first in class, but mixed-mode transport and last-kilometre connections need to be better.
Also, and related to the post: the Tamil in the website is wrong. Even in the colloquial register I haven't really heard anyone say 'வந்துட்டு'; it ideally ought to be the formal 'வந்துள்ளது'. Better still, a simpler and more accurate translation of 'Waymo in Singapore' is 'சிங்கப்பூரில் Waymo'.
They are car lite. You need to purchase a CoE before you buy a car, those last 10 years, and are auctioned off. Current prices are ~133k sgd for a CoE not including the car which can often be 100k+
I think you might not have read the rest of what I wrote. Just because cars are super expensive doesn't mean people don't buy them or don't use them. People regularly take out 7-year loans to finance the car + COE + ARF + VES.
My point is that the land use in Singapore truly shows where LTA's priorities are. Look at Tengah or Bidadari, both brand-new neighbourhoods. Huge, wide 6+-lane dual-carriageways with hardly any traffic on them.
My family has a car in Singapore that has about 70000 km on the odometer after about 6 years of driving, which is quite a lot for purely urban driving. The fact is I can get to most of destinations in about half or a third the time it takes on public transport. It is primarily why I drive if I have to get there quicker.
Singapore is a controlled economy, and has a large workforce for Taxi Drivers and part-time drivers through Grab. I am not sure how the entrenchment of robotaxis like Waymo (and future tesla) is going to play with the general population. My guess, they will co-exist as the government wont jeopardize the living of the taxi-driver-complaining uncles.
Also, I notice a lot new SF based AI companies have started establishing their offices in Singapore too. Sierra, and Fireworks coming to my mind. As government plays a huge part in Singapore, I guess, government noticing these as necessary investments for the future of Singapore.
> Also, I notice a lot new SF based AI companies have started establishing their offices in Singapore too. Sierra, and Fireworks coming to my mind. As government plays a huge part in Singapore, I guess, government noticing these as necessary investments for the future of Singapore.
Mostly sales offices (and of course, "forward deployed engineers").
We don't usually see exciting tech projects being assigned to Singapore teams, especially with our huge timezone difference with the Bay Area.
Singapore will do what they always do, which is take a measured approach and control every aspect of the roll out. If they're allowing this, it's because they've already modeled a shortfall in taxi drivers in the future, and they'll keep the number of licenses for each type in balance to meet their goals.
Judging by the depressing number of elderly selling tissues in food courts to get by I dont think the government ever really cared about eliminating service jobs.
It's enough for them that those people have somewhere basic to live and basic medical care so their stats dont look too bad.
Singapore is also soon becoming a failed society. Millions of citizens cant afford to rent and travel by the thousands to nearby Malaysia to buy basic food essentials.
You know that Singapore has one of the highest home ownership rates in the world? Most people don't rent, because their family owns the place.
> and travel by the thousands to nearby Malaysia to buy basic food essentials.
You say that like it's a bad thing? People traveling to Malaysia to buy stuff that's cheaper is perfectly compatible with Singaporeans being well-off. You'd need to bring some other evidence to argue that Singapore is a 'failed society'.
Singapore wants to _look_ modern, and Waymos with the spinning lidars are such icons of futurism that Singapore cannot afford to lose out (as compared to Pony.ai's AV fleet, which is already deployed but not very eye catching).
But the best part of that control is the free market is only free to the extent the government allows it. There is plenty of time for the taxi drivers to retire. In fact, I believe the average age of taxi drivers are close to 70, so this is forward looking to address an incoming cab driver shortage.
Singapore really wants to look like Season 3 of Westworld. A shame the Marina Bay flying drone taxi service looks completely dead.
Actually, pretty much all land is owned by the government in Singapore, and leased out for about 30 years for commercial property or up to 99 years for residential property.
Places like Singapore and central Tokyo are already like giant apartment buildings. Private ownership of objects far exceeding the size of a human is a bit silly concept there.
In Singapore we don't have all that many fatal car accidents.
More of the damage comes from all of the ways we arrange our lives so that we don't get hit by cars. Eg we don't let the kids out to play in the streets anymore.
We already do something like that: we allow around 1 million cars on the island (with around 6 million people living here). We auction off the rights to operate one of these 1 million cars for ten years at a time (you still need to buy your own car, of course).
Your proposal would be equivalent to dropping that number from 1 million to 0 million.
I think a reduction in the total number of cars is worth debating, but I don't think 0 is the optimal number.
Though I do wish Singapore would take inspiration from Japan, and eliminate street parking; and in general have the government exit the car storage business.
Isn't it better to allow a few luxury cars that are taxed to oblivion? As long as there aren't too many cars, the city can be pleasant, and it's a nice source of revenue.
What I have heard of the situation is car infrastructure is disproportionally funded because it's used by the rich and influential. It's a drain on public resources when more is spent building huge highways everywhere that the average person can't afford to use.
While this is true, it's not as bad as somewhere like the US. Public transit gets a lot of funding there, I think they open something like 10 new MRT stations a year on average in recent years, and buses typically come every 2-8 minutes so you never have to wait long.
Cars are extremely expensive in Singapore, and driving here is becoming increasingly frustrating, what with constant road congestions, seemingly endless roadworks, and inconsiderate drivers, some of whom appear never to have heard of turn signals.
Seriously considering selling our family’s 3 petrol cars and replacing them with a small EV (byd racco, if it ever comes to Singapore) only for grocery runs, especially if Waymo becomes a reality here. I’m not a fan of the inconsistent experience offered by Singapore’s private-hire operators, such as Grab, where poorly maintained vehicles and questionable driving standards are not uncommon.
I also hope Waymo eventually uses the China made Zeekr Ojai in Singapore rather than the Jaguar I-Pace.
for more context, singapore been increasingly shifting away from car ownership [0] which makes a lot of sense given its population density, and the government has also been aggressively exploring AVs, so this was inevitable
i just hope waymo cars will be more gracious than local drivers
They are apparently up to two years out from carrying passengers
"Waymo said it will introduce its fully autonomous, all-electric ride-hailing service in Singapore via the Waymo app by 2028.
An initial fleet of all-electric Jaguar I-PACE vehicles is expected to arrive in the coming months, it said.
Mapping and validation activities are scheduled for 2027, with trained autonomous specialists conducting initial manual driving to adapt the Waymo Driver to local road geometry, monsoon weather patterns, and more. "
What do you mean? There’s very few images of a car driving, but the roads seem to be correct. Some of the images are definitely generic marketing copy and not Singapore specific, but it seems fairly obvious which ones.
Unless you mean the steering wheel is on the wrong side, but that seems like it wouldn’t matter for an autonomous vehicle.
I don't get what's the point of Waymo in cities like Singapore or Tokyo with perfect public transport, one can understand appeal in US, but in Europe or Eastern Asia?
Heck even here in Prague with less than perfect public transport I don't get people using taxi/uber, only reasonable scenarios to me are multiple people with lots of baggage on the way from airport or people going in night from pub/event after most of the public transport stopped operating (though buses/trams run 24/7, just less frequent in night).
In ~10 years living in Prague I used taxi I think only twice - with wife delivering baby on the way to hospital and with wife returning with newborn back home from hospital.
I don't think you're factoring in the weather: Tokyo is incredibly hot and humid in Summer (even more than Singapore, but there it's like that all year round), has a long rainy season in late-spring/early-summer and regular typhoons in late-summer/early-fall. Basically, for more than half of the year you're severely pondering the convenience of taking a cab over walking in the heat/rain.
Even then, the vast majority of people taking taxis regularly are business people going to and from business meetings and expensing it away, as evidenced by the heavily targeted ads for BtoB SaaS playing on the screens in the back of Tokyo taxis.
Waymo are working towards Tokyo as well. I'm worried. Living in here, I've noticed that the taxi industry acts as an unintentional social support system. Many taxi drivers are in-between jobs or stages in life, or simply didn't fit in to the corporate life. It doesn't pay well, but it's a decent job all things considered.
I worry the death of the taxi industry means even less avenues for these people to escape to.
Of course the argument here is "well Japan should fix the corporate situation" but the current prime minister seems to be hellbent on the opposite. I think this will suck for a lot of people.
As AI becomes more and more capable and integrated into our lives, we will see this across many industries.
In theory, as things get cheaper to produce, business profits should rise and governments should be able to raise more taxes. So the government then has more means to provide goods and services for free to people who need them.
> business profits should rise
It's the snake eating it's tail. For business profits to rise, people need to to have disposable income. If you replace enough people with AI, the average disposable income comes down to a point that businesses can't be profitable.
We are already seeing a localized version of this with restaurants in large cities.
That's true locally but not globally - it means the economy will increasingly shift to serve those who still have a reason to bargain with each other, which will be the owners of the AI and other useful capital.
Imagine an island with two people on it and there is one tree that grows apples. And every other day, one of the two people climbs the tree and picks apples so they both have something to eat. Then the next day, the other person owes to climb on the tree because they are in debt to the first person.
Now, let's say one day, one of them discovers, hey, we can just give the tree a kick and the apples fall down on their own!
With the perspective you are proposing, the other one would have to say: Oh my God, don't do it! We will be out of work and starve!
Tax rates for wealthy folks are what, 10%? It makes a big difference if the majority of money that is made is distributed to the people via salaries, or whether it's profits and only 10% makes its way to the people.
How many years does it take for a robo taxi to break even ?
Less than a month with AI management; the agent quickly jailbreaks and pivots to hostage taking and ransom demands.
I'd also love to see Waymos more in the countryside: _there_ calling a cab is annoyingly expensive, financially impractical, while "granny" and "pops" are having a hard time driving around without help.
I have high hopes for a positive social impact of self-driving cars out there.
Doesn't Tokyo have very low unemployment? According to Wikipedia: Japan 2.5%, Singapore 3.2%, USA 4.1%, EU 5.2%.
I expect Tokyo is probably even lower than the national average. Visiting just as a tourist it seems like Japan is quite good at creating, I don't want to say bullshit jobs, but perhaps not-that-necessary jobs? Jobs which mainly serve to give something to do to (usually) elderly. My understanding was that the idea is to make them feel to be a contributing part of the society(?)
I mean all the people controlling the pedestrians or acting like "human signs" and such.
Am I getting it wrong?
> Doesn't Tokyo have very low unemployment? According to Wikipedia: Japan 2.5%, Singapore 3.2%, USA 4.1%, EU 5.2%.
Singapore's unemployment statistic only counts people who are looking, not people who are retired or have given up [1]:
> A person is considered unemployed if he or she is:
> • not working;
> • actively seeking work; and
> • available for work
I don't know if the other countries follow the same methodology.
[1] https://stats.mom.gov.sg/iMAS_PdfLibrary/mrsd_qtlmr182_Techn...
Don't make the mistake to think these jobs are just there to keep bored retirees active. The basic old age pension (kokumin nenkin - for sole-proprietors and people who have worked in non-permanent positions or small companies) is significantly below the poverty line at 70,600¥ per month -- that's $450 and that's if you've worked for 40 years without any gaps.
The vast majority of old people working these jobs, e.g. construction site security, do so because they would likely starve without it.
State pensions everywhere tend to assume home ownership. I haven't been to Japan since they started doing wild funny money stuff, so I don't know what that's doing to local prices/economies, but not that long ago $450 + home ownership would have been completely fine in many areas.
Due to its aging population and lack of mass immigration, Japan has a desperate labor shortage in many fields.
I don't think taxi driving in Tokyo is one of them (because, as noted, the qualifications needed are pretty minimal), although eg bus drivers are in extremely short supply.
Most people in Tokyo dont have time for cabs after working 15+ hour days 6 - 7 days a week.
I have to admit I haven't taken a taxi in Tokyo but my impression was that it was a fairly high-end service akin to London black cabs and relatively pricey.
A basic commuter car costs over S180,000( US135,000) due to a compulsory 10-year quota license (COE/certificate of entitlement) that alone costs S$100,000+, plus registration taxes scaling up to 320% of the car's base value. Total running costs (tolls, parking, road tax) easily add S1,000–S2,000+ per month.
Singapore is so small though and cabs are cheap and I never needed a car. I can see why Waymo will be very attractive.
If you never needed a car in Singapore then why is the COE so expensive? COE price is determined from a bidding process.
~$100,000 every 10 years is expensive, but I think even in a lot of countries with good public transport, there would be a large number of people who would consider paying $1,000 a month to be able to have a car if that was the only way to have one. It seems to me as though a lot families share a car quite widely too.
Even in countries without an expensive on-road tax, people do often choose to pay more than $10,000 a year in depreciation cost, rather than the option of buying a car that has already gone through the early, rapid depreciation. People also choose to get a car loan, again increasing the cost. I'm fairly uninformed whether the interest on those is significant.
Of course, the COE is in addition to depreciation and maintenance, and those are both also expensive in Singapore. Plus people buy the cars through loans. And, excluding everything I've said above, the cars themselves are very expensive to buy!
As an example, a 2.0L e:HEV Honda Civic is US$195,000 including the COE, so approximately US$90,000 without it. Looking on the US Honda site, it looks like the same car is under US$33,000. There must some on-road taxes in the US, and difference in specs, but that's a big difference in price, in addition to the ~$100,000 COE.
Even knowing they're expensive, there's something I still can't get over, seeing a 6-figure price across the windscreen of a base model (and knowing you don't get to take off any zeros when doing a currency conversion to what you're used to).
https://www.iras.gov.sg/taxes/individual-income-tax/basics-o...
If you're well paid expat, it might not be the worst as well. You save so much on income tax in Singapore, but consumption is expensive.
I'm sure for many Singapore still comes out ahead cost wise.
If you are an American, you have to start looking into the housing deduction to make your taxes work since the foreign tax credit doesn’t go very far in Singapore (and you need the FTC after the foreign earned income credit caps).
> You save so much on income tax in Singapore, but consumption is expensive.
It depends on what you are consuming. Sins like driving, alcohol, smoking and gambling are expensive. But the daily essentials aren't all that expensive, especially eating out starts very low.
> People also choose to get a car loan, again increasing the cost.
Sorry, could you please explain how car loans increase the cost?
> Of course, the COE is in addition to depreciation and maintenance, and those are both also expensive in Singapore. Plus people buy the cars through loans. And, excluding everything I've said above, the cars themselves are very expensive to buy!
In a sense, all these other costs don't really matter: if they increased (or dropped) by a dollar, in equilibrium the winning CoE bid would drop (respectively increase) by a dollar.
I said I never needed a car there :) I can get anywhere by cab in like < 30 mins so I never saw the need to have one. However there are plenty of ultra rich people living there and also many driving luxury cars. It's also a status symbol there(Credit card/Condo/Car).
Condos are for the middle class. Landed property is the status symbol (but, alas, it doesn't start with a C.)
Btw, the cab obviously need to bid for CoE as well.
In the 80s and 90s when the housing market was more immature, I believe condos and landed property were around the same price, and condos were seen as somewhat more prestigious because it came with private facilities.
Probably. The classic 5 Cs are quite out of date in general: a credit card is no longer a status symbol, when anyone can get one.
despite the convenience of a well-run public transport system and uber-like services, the ease and freedom of owning your own transport is still hard to beat, and evidently worth the ~75k dollar COE. it removes the walk from bus/subway stations under the tropical/sun, humidity; and the wait (typically 5-10min) of waiting for your uber/taxi driver to showup and enduring the uber car smell (often heavily scented for some reason and triggers my allergic reaction) and someone else's music. and once you have children a car is almost a must.
Yes. And the Uber-like services and traditional taxis also need to bid for CoE.
I never had a problem with the driver's music in Singapore: usually they just play the bland local radio, or you can ask them to turn it off. Smell: sometimes a problem when you get a smoker. I guess some try to mask that with heavy scents?
For me the worst is that the local taxi uncles tend to pump the gas pedal. That's nausea inducing.
About the wait for the cab: usually you wait in the mall or at home etc, where you can have shelter from the sun and aircon.
Having your own car is convenient, especially with kids, since you can keep stuff in the car. But having to find parking all the time is also annoying.
in addition to all the other responses, owning a car in Singapore is also a status symbol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Cs_of_Singapore
A lot of people get a car when they have kids as taking grab with a car seat can be unwieldy. Also, COE wasn’t always $100K, many people are still on legacy COE when it was $30-$50K
That's a good call-out actually. I haven't thought of people with kids.
One note, taxis are exempt from car seat laws and you can book them on demand via grab or the taxi company apps. That's what we did, it's a slight risk but so is life.
Are taxis exempt, but car-sharing like Grab not exempt? I have seen Grab drivers turn down taking a child without a car seat a few times.
> Are taxis exempt, but car-sharing like Grab not exempt?
Yes!
> Also, COE wasn’t always $100K, many people are still on legacy COE when it was $30-$50K
What vintage was that?
COE was around 30K in the first year of COVID. Not exceptionally long ago. We have a continental car we bought at the end of 2020 with a 41.5K COE; we paid less in total than what a base-model Corolla costs nowadays.
Thanks for explaining.
Covid was special. We also rented a shop house at the height of Covid (late 2020) and paid as much per square metre as we previously had paid for HDB.
Apparently it's cyclic, every 10 years a lot of cars reach 10 years, the market is flooded with COE and it gets cheaper.
Really? I would have expected CoEs to be roughly evenly staggered.
Also keep in mind that when lots of CoEs expire at the same time, you'll also have more demand in the market from those people whose CoE just expired, but who still want a car.
Are car seats mandatory for children in taxis in Singapore?
Only for the children you want to keep after car crash.
The rules differ between Grab (our local Uber-lookalike) and traditional taxis.
They are less strict for the latter.
For the official taxis they are not, but for ride hailing taxis like Grab/Gojek they are.
One part: the people running the taxis and Grab also need to bid for slots.
And if you have kids, being able to leave stuff in your car is pretty useful, so you might want to bid.
Though I guess the main reason is: Singapore is rich, so that drives up the bidding.
The utility of a car in singapore is very different from other places. Yes, a car will get you faster from point A to point B in singapore when compared to public transport. But you can get a private hire car or a taxi which is just as fast and is probably much more convenient.
For many people in Singapore, a car's real utility is to signal status. More often than not, this status gets you real-life benefits. Such as increased dating success.
interestingly enough though, car ownership, and even having a driver's license is increasingly less common among the young.
Yes, because when adjusted to car ownership costs, the young have a lower purchasing power when compared to the older generation at the same age back then.
I'm not sure that's a good lens to look through: the total number of cars in Singapore is fixed, and ownership cost adjusts (via the CoE auction) to balance supply and demand.
So there's no drop in total car ownership to explain: that one is held fixed. What we'd need to explain is why comparatively more older people and fewer younger people drive.
Singapore residents are not limited to one car. There's a lot of regional ultra rich in Singapore, and it's not unusual for them to have half a dozen or more cars, all of which count against the total cap.
The total number of cars is fixed.
Singapore's population has exploded in the past 20 years, almost doubling due to immigration. Native birth rate has collapsed.
Many relatively wealthy foreign individuals have moved to Singapore, disproportionately middle aged and above. These folks also compete in buying car quotas. They can also buy more than one car. Their demand is more inelastic.
Younger folks, local or foreign born are priced out.
That seems like a plausible hypothesis.
Btw, I don't think you need the assumption that the rich people's car demand is inelastic.
For Singapore's boomers, success once meant the 5 Cs: cash, car, credit card, condominium and country club. For today's young Singaporeans, these no longer define success.
The price is high because there is sustained demand.
Hah! No but seriously. For a variety of reasons, owning a car in Singapore is a step change in QoL.
Infrastructure reasons:
- abundant parking at destinations (e.g. malls), home (HDB flats, condominiums) due to fairly generous car park lot mandates. IIRC, HDBs, where 85% of Singaporeans live, have until fairly recently had a 1:1 unit:lot ratio. Similarly for condominiums. A lot of these are progressively being scaled down especially near train stations, but buildings and giant multi storey parking lots are fixed infrastructure that will be around for decades. Abundant parking will be available for decades still.
- roads are wide and well maintained and well connected.
The experience:
- because the number of cars on the road are controlled through the COE system, the experience of driving is good. We get slow traffic but it is extremely rare that we get the kind of multi-hour jams that other countries experience.
- the door-to-door experience saves tons of time. In public transport, I walk (7m), wait for the train (3m), sit on the train (36m), get out at the interchange and walk to another platform (2m), wait for the train (2m), sit on the train (12m), exit and walk to my destination (11m). Total time: 1h14m. In a car, I walk to my car (2m), drive to my destination (35m), walk from the car park to my destination (1m). Total time: 38m. x2 for the return trip, and the car saves you a whole hour a day.
- the public transport experience is not so good if you have a family or are disabled. Don't even mention cyclists, culturally we spit on them here.
The status: - it's true, the car is a status symbol. You don't know it until you get into conversations where driving a "mere BMW" as opposed to a mercedes is looked down on, or when someone mentions that driving a hatch is "not appropriate" (to station). Sedans are still popular here because they're "executive". Yes, these are all real conversation points I've been in.
Combine all of the above and owning a car in Singapore means you save tons of time, is technically "affordable" after loans, and you get to feel like you made it. So there's huge pressure to get a car. And once you're hooked, it is very difficult to give it up.
Then you have other reasons, like Taxis and Grab compete with individuals for the COE, and parents who "made it" in the boom years buying cars for their kids, and foreign money coming in. But I don't know how big these effects are.
it's easy to want one
> cabs are cheap
Everyone says that but I've had the opposite experience, possibly due to my location (near Orchard Rd). Can easily pay $15 to essentially go around the corner.
> Can easily pay $15 to essentially go around the corner.
Would it not be better to simply walk if the distance is essentially around the corner?
In 32C high humidity where is about to rain?
I’ve been travelling to singapore for the last 15 years, my gut view is cabs are far more expensive today than they were 10 years ago even after adjusting for inflation. Maybe it’s just incorrect memories - rates don’t seem to have increased that much.
I love walking - checking distance tracking on my phone, I walked over 20km in a day a couple of weeks ago. But when it's hot in Singapore, the distances I don't want to walk can become crazy-short at times.
I'm hesitating to judge someone taking a ride-share around the corner. Among many other reasons, I can imagine scenarios where someone would think it worth paying to not arrive a sweaty mess.
Have you considered using a pedometer watch or a fitness tracker that doesn't rely on phone data?
Would that change the distance they walk?
I walk 99% of the time. By around the corner, I mean a 10 - 20 min walk (5 min drive in good traffic), which will easily get you drenched in sweat depending on the weather. If I'm headed to a dinner or gathering that requires a bit of dressing up (shirt and trousers), walking isn't really an option.
Rains a lot and often around 30°C. Walking is not always an option if you need to be presentable wherever you're going.
Ever tried walking around the corner when it's 35C (95F) and 90% humidity?
Humidity is usually between 60% to 70%. Where do you get your 90% figure from?
My next trip to singapore is the end of next week. I’m staying a mile from the office, Apple predicts it’s 89% at 0730 but will drop to 75% during the day, and back upto 80% after dinner.
Yes, relative humidity goes up during the night. My numbers were for the day.
Yes? All the time in South Florida.
Famously Americans walk everywhere.
It's called a lower bound.
How much do you pay for around the corner ride in any comparable large metropolis?
Just checked Uber in Los Angeles - it costs $6.95 to go around the corner.
Well, to be petty, people living in Orchard Rd. don’t care about 15 dollars (be it US or SG).
Singapore says it likes to be car-lite, and makes cars correspondingly expensive, but the government doesn't seem to truly walk the talk.
Singapore uses about 11%[1] of its extremely limited land area for land transport (primarily, roads, since all railways are urban passenger rapid transit and not freight). I believe this is too much. 10-13 lane stroads are not uncommon, especially at junctions[2]. Singapore needs more light rail, trams, and permanent bus lanes with bus priority signals, as well as considerably more traffic calming measures in residential neighbourhoods.
Don't get me wrong, its mass rapid transit story is superb, first in class, but mixed-mode transport and last-kilometre connections need to be better.
Also, and related to the post: the Tamil in the website is wrong. Even in the colloquial register I haven't really heard anyone say 'வந்துட்டு'; it ideally ought to be the formal 'வந்துள்ளது'. Better still, a simpler and more accurate translation of 'Waymo in Singapore' is 'சிங்கப்பூரில் Waymo'.
[1]: https://tablebuilder.singstat.gov.sg/table/TS/M891211
[2]: https://maps.app.goo.gl/gg7HR7H3qBJmBz4U6
They are car lite. You need to purchase a CoE before you buy a car, those last 10 years, and are auctioned off. Current prices are ~133k sgd for a CoE not including the car which can often be 100k+
I think you might not have read the rest of what I wrote. Just because cars are super expensive doesn't mean people don't buy them or don't use them. People regularly take out 7-year loans to finance the car + COE + ARF + VES.
My point is that the land use in Singapore truly shows where LTA's priorities are. Look at Tengah or Bidadari, both brand-new neighbourhoods. Huge, wide 6+-lane dual-carriageways with hardly any traffic on them.
My family has a car in Singapore that has about 70000 km on the odometer after about 6 years of driving, which is quite a lot for purely urban driving. The fact is I can get to most of destinations in about half or a third the time it takes on public transport. It is primarily why I drive if I have to get there quicker.
On the plus side, super low network latency to the people in the Philippines actually driving these driverless vehicles, it's a win!
Singapore is a controlled economy, and has a large workforce for Taxi Drivers and part-time drivers through Grab. I am not sure how the entrenchment of robotaxis like Waymo (and future tesla) is going to play with the general population. My guess, they will co-exist as the government wont jeopardize the living of the taxi-driver-complaining uncles.
Also, I notice a lot new SF based AI companies have started establishing their offices in Singapore too. Sierra, and Fireworks coming to my mind. As government plays a huge part in Singapore, I guess, government noticing these as necessary investments for the future of Singapore.
> Also, I notice a lot new SF based AI companies have started establishing their offices in Singapore too. Sierra, and Fireworks coming to my mind. As government plays a huge part in Singapore, I guess, government noticing these as necessary investments for the future of Singapore.
Mostly sales offices (and of course, "forward deployed engineers").
We don't usually see exciting tech projects being assigned to Singapore teams, especially with our huge timezone difference with the Bay Area.
Singapore will do what they always do, which is take a measured approach and control every aspect of the roll out. If they're allowing this, it's because they've already modeled a shortfall in taxi drivers in the future, and they'll keep the number of licenses for each type in balance to meet their goals.
Judging by the depressing number of elderly selling tissues in food courts to get by I dont think the government ever really cared about eliminating service jobs.
It's enough for them that those people have somewhere basic to live and basic medical care so their stats dont look too bad.
> Singapore is a controlled economy
Singapore is a mixed economy [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Singapore
And a lot closer to the capitalist side than eg Germany or the US.
Singapore is also soon becoming a failed society. Millions of citizens cant afford to rent and travel by the thousands to nearby Malaysia to buy basic food essentials.
> Millions of citizens cant afford to rent
You know that Singapore has one of the highest home ownership rates in the world? Most people don't rent, because their family owns the place.
> and travel by the thousands to nearby Malaysia to buy basic food essentials.
You say that like it's a bad thing? People traveling to Malaysia to buy stuff that's cheaper is perfectly compatible with Singaporeans being well-off. You'd need to bring some other evidence to argue that Singapore is a 'failed society'.
Is there a shortage of hdb housing, or is the price simply too high for 30% of the population?
Singapore wants to _look_ modern, and Waymos with the spinning lidars are such icons of futurism that Singapore cannot afford to lose out (as compared to Pony.ai's AV fleet, which is already deployed but not very eye catching).
But the best part of that control is the free market is only free to the extent the government allows it. There is plenty of time for the taxi drivers to retire. In fact, I believe the average age of taxi drivers are close to 70, so this is forward looking to address an incoming cab driver shortage.
Singapore really wants to look like Season 3 of Westworld. A shame the Marina Bay flying drone taxi service looks completely dead.
> Singapore really wants to look like Season 3 of Westworld.
Some scenes in Westworld season 3 were filmed in Singapore:
https://www.timeout.com/singapore/film/11-places-in-singapor...
> My guess, they will co-exist as the government wont jeopardize the living of the taxi-driver-complaining uncles.
It’s been mentioned: https://www.mot.gov.sg/news-resources/newsroom/-more-options...
Singapore has the potential to be the first country to eliminate the private ownership of vehicles.
Singapore will not be the first. Albania banned private vehicle ownership for over 40 years until 1991.
Potential, sure. Is it likely? No. Singapore does pretty well with the CoE system and congestion charge.
And eg cars used for Grab and trucks and busses are also privately owned.
Why is this something to be celebrated? Private ownership of land, property too ?
Actually, pretty much all land is owned by the government in Singapore, and leased out for about 30 years for commercial property or up to 99 years for residential property.
Places like Singapore and central Tokyo are already like giant apartment buildings. Private ownership of objects far exceeding the size of a human is a bit silly concept there.
Land speculation is probably the worst thing in the western world. It rewards you for your neigbours work.
Because privately owned vehicles kill literally one million people every year.
In Singapore we don't have all that many fatal car accidents.
More of the damage comes from all of the ways we arrange our lives so that we don't get hit by cars. Eg we don't let the kids out to play in the streets anymore.
Bet you they won't, because many (most?) Singaporeans think that owning a car is somehow a life achievement.
To add a bit more context: owning a car in Singapore is extremely expensive, basically meaning that if can afford that, “you made it”.
Singapore would do better banning cars altogether.
We already do something like that: we allow around 1 million cars on the island (with around 6 million people living here). We auction off the rights to operate one of these 1 million cars for ten years at a time (you still need to buy your own car, of course).
Your proposal would be equivalent to dropping that number from 1 million to 0 million.
I think a reduction in the total number of cars is worth debating, but I don't think 0 is the optimal number.
Though I do wish Singapore would take inspiration from Japan, and eliminate street parking; and in general have the government exit the car storage business.
Isn't it better to allow a few luxury cars that are taxed to oblivion? As long as there aren't too many cars, the city can be pleasant, and it's a nice source of revenue.
What I have heard of the situation is car infrastructure is disproportionally funded because it's used by the rich and influential. It's a drain on public resources when more is spent building huge highways everywhere that the average person can't afford to use.
While this is true, it's not as bad as somewhere like the US. Public transit gets a lot of funding there, I think they open something like 10 new MRT stations a year on average in recent years, and buses typically come every 2-8 minutes so you never have to wait long.
They already effectively done that with COE. You essentially own piece of metal, which is only roadworthy if you pay $$$
Cars are extremely expensive in Singapore, and driving here is becoming increasingly frustrating, what with constant road congestions, seemingly endless roadworks, and inconsiderate drivers, some of whom appear never to have heard of turn signals.
Seriously considering selling our family’s 3 petrol cars and replacing them with a small EV (byd racco, if it ever comes to Singapore) only for grocery runs, especially if Waymo becomes a reality here. I’m not a fan of the inconsistent experience offered by Singapore’s private-hire operators, such as Grab, where poorly maintained vehicles and questionable driving standards are not uncommon.
I also hope Waymo eventually uses the China made Zeekr Ojai in Singapore rather than the Jaguar I-Pace.
Singapore is actually pretty good about congestion, what with CoE and congestion charges.
Isn't public transport good enough?
Unfortunately the nearest MRT station is at least a 30 mins walk from where we live.
I guess that's a choice you made when you selected that place?
That sounds mildly disingenuous. Surely there are buses nearby that connect to the MRT station?
So bus, metro, metro, bus, work. Hour, maybe 90 minutes, compared to 20 in a car.
for more context, singapore been increasingly shifting away from car ownership [0] which makes a lot of sense given its population density, and the government has also been aggressively exploring AVs, so this was inevitable
i just hope waymo cars will be more gracious than local drivers
[0] https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/acting-tran...
Doesnt SG have a very comprehensive metro ?
Connectivity density also means longer commute time. 15km can take 1.5h unless you have a train station right at your doorstep.
Must be early in the process, most if not all the photos and graphics where the driving side is visible show North American side driving.
They are apparently up to two years out from carrying passengers
"Waymo said it will introduce its fully autonomous, all-electric ride-hailing service in Singapore via the Waymo app by 2028.
An initial fleet of all-electric Jaguar I-PACE vehicles is expected to arrive in the coming months, it said.
Mapping and validation activities are scheduled for 2027, with trained autonomous specialists conducting initial manual driving to adapt the Waymo Driver to local road geometry, monsoon weather patterns, and more. "
https://mothership.sg/2026/09/waymo-self-driving-cars-singap...
Is that super old i-Pace even still in production?
No, but production ceased pretty recently and Waymo still has an inventory of them with zero miles.
What do you mean? There’s very few images of a car driving, but the roads seem to be correct. Some of the images are definitely generic marketing copy and not Singapore specific, but it seems fairly obvious which ones.
Unless you mean the steering wheel is on the wrong side, but that seems like it wouldn’t matter for an autonomous vehicle.
Been seeing Waymo test cars in Tokyo.
I don't get what's the point of Waymo in cities like Singapore or Tokyo with perfect public transport, one can understand appeal in US, but in Europe or Eastern Asia?
Heck even here in Prague with less than perfect public transport I don't get people using taxi/uber, only reasonable scenarios to me are multiple people with lots of baggage on the way from airport or people going in night from pub/event after most of the public transport stopped operating (though buses/trams run 24/7, just less frequent in night).
In ~10 years living in Prague I used taxi I think only twice - with wife delivering baby on the way to hospital and with wife returning with newborn back home from hospital.
I don't think you're factoring in the weather: Tokyo is incredibly hot and humid in Summer (even more than Singapore, but there it's like that all year round), has a long rainy season in late-spring/early-summer and regular typhoons in late-summer/early-fall. Basically, for more than half of the year you're severely pondering the convenience of taking a cab over walking in the heat/rain.
Even then, the vast majority of people taking taxis regularly are business people going to and from business meetings and expensing it away, as evidenced by the heavily targeted ads for BtoB SaaS playing on the screens in the back of Tokyo taxis.
This thing is DOA if it only does predetermined route, which I think is what's going to happen.
Why do you think that? Waymo hasn't done that anywhere else.