All posts tagged: Waymo

All press is good press, right? Cybercab event leaves more questions than answers

All press is good press, right? Cybercab event leaves more questions than answers

Published by skeptic

On today’s pressing episode of Quick Charge, we challenge the notion that all press is good press by filling the void of information surrounding this week’s Tesla Cybercab launch with a whole lot of bad news for the Full Self Driving brand. This week’s headlines have been full of bad news for Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self Driving brands, but the big questions are more about the broken promises made to the company’s earliest believers – plus, Waymo racks up speeding tickets while IONNA slashes the cost of your electric road trips for Labor Day. Source Links Prefer listening to your podcasts? Audio-only versions of Quick Charge are now available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn, and our RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players. New episodes of Quick Charge are (allegedly) recorded several times per week, most weeks. We’ll be posting bonus audio content from time to time as well, so be sure to follow and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute of Electrek’s high-voltage podcast series. Advertisement – scroll for more content Got news? Let us know!Drop us a line at tips@electrek.co. You can also rate …

Waymo racked up 8,300+ SF parking tickets and nearly M in fines

Waymo racked up 8,300+ SF parking tickets and nearly $1M in fines

Published by skeptic

Waymo’s robotaxis have collected more than 8,300 parking tickets in San Francisco since the start of 2025, running up close to $1 million in fines along the way. The citations tracked the fleet’s rapid growth across the city. In 2024, Waymo caught just 589 tickets. It’s now averaging more than 100 a week. The figures come from San Francisco parking records obtained by the Gazetteer covering January 2025 through mid-July 2026. Over that stretch, Waymo’s driverless cars picked up 8,309 tickets worth $957,008 in fines. The company took 4,178 of them in 2025, then another 4,131 in the first six and a half months of 2026 alone. For context, those 589 tickets in all of 2024 cost Waymo $65,065. The company is now paying that much roughly every month. Advertisement – scroll for more content Where the robotaxis keep getting caught The single most common violation was parking in stands, spots reserved for buses and specific vehicles, with 2,038 tickets. The rest of the list reads like a catalog of dense-city curbside problems: parking in …

Waymo opens robotaxi rides to the public in 3 new cities, now 14 total

Waymo opens robotaxi rides to the public in 3 new cities, now 14 total

Published by skeptic

Waymo opened its driverless ride-hailing service to the general public in Denver, San Diego, and Tampa on Monday, bringing the Alphabet-owned company to 14 US cities. Tens of thousands of people in each market had already signed up before the doors opened, and Waymo says it will let them in gradually over the coming weeks. From waitlist to public in under two months This isn’t the first time these three cities have shown up in a Waymo announcement. We reported in July that Waymo had flipped Las Vegas to fully driverless and lined up Denver, San Diego, and Tampa as the next markets. Back then, the service was still limited to employees and invited guests. Now anyone can hail a ride. Riders in Denver and San Diego are getting Waymo’s new Zeekr-built vehicle, the roomier minivan-style platform running the company’s next-generation Waymo Driver, while the fleet fills out over the coming months. Advertisement – scroll for more content Waymo has launched commercial service in seven new cities since March 2025, and it’s doing all of …

TechCrunch Mobility: The hidden human cost of robotaxis

TechCrunch Mobility: The hidden human cost of robotaxis

Published by skeptic

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, the role AI is playing in it. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Proponents of autonomous vehicle technology have long argued that robotaxis and other self-driving vehicles will reduce crash incidents and make roads safer. And there is some evidence of that. But that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been a cost to those who are working (or have worked) for the companies developing that tech.  Sean O’Kane, senior reporter, special projects, dug into data submitted to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and found that test drivers for Waymo and Zoox sustained more than two dozen injuries in 2024 and 2025 from hard braking or other sudden movements made by the autonomous vehicles. In some cases, these workers were sidelined for months after sustaining injuries like whiplash when the AVs stopped abruptly, and hard. Check out his full story, which includes interviews with former and current workers.  There is …

Waymo takes a shot at Tesla’s self-driving: it’s a ‘false summit’

Waymo takes a shot at Tesla’s self-driving: it’s a ‘false summit’

Published by skeptic

Waymo published a list of “10 AI lessons” from driving more than 200 million fully autonomous miles, and several of them read as a direct rebuke of Tesla’s self-driving strategy — without ever naming Tesla. The sharpest: trying to turn a driver-assist system into full autonomy is a “false summit,” according to Waymo. That’s exactly what Tesla is attempting with Full Self-Driving. What Waymo actually said The post, published Tuesday by Waymo’s head of AI foundations, Srikanth Thirumalai, frames all 10 lessons around safety and the company’s 200-million-mile record in fully driverless operation. Lesson 10 is the one aimed squarely at the L2-to-L4 playbook: Advertisement – scroll for more content Simply improving a driver-assist system (L2) for full autonomy is a false summit. True L4 maturity can only be safely achieved by a purpose-built system, validated on closed courses and hardened by the uncompromising experience of driving without a human in the car. Waymo’s argument is that neither billions of simulated miles nor millions of “supervised” human-present miles can replicate what a system learns once …

TechCrunch Mobility: The custom chip driving Waymo’s robotaxi ambitions

TechCrunch Mobility: The custom chip driving Waymo’s robotaxi ambitions

Published by skeptic

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Waymo gets a lot of attention for its fast-paced expansion. And for good reason; it seems like every week, the company’s robotaxis are arriving in a new city, or expanding within an existing service area.  We’ve known for a while that Waymo’s sixth-generation self-driving system — which debuted in its next-generation Ojai robotaxi — is central to those ambitions. But now we have a better understanding about why.  The company, which just opened its Ojai robotaxi to all riders in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco, has repeatedly said that this next-gen vehicle is cheaper to build, operate, and maintain — ingredients required if the company has any hopes of someday turning a profit.  What was less clear, until this week, was just how hands-on and vertically integrated Waymo has become as it chases that goal. The company shared this week …

Tesla, Uber, and Waymo all get the OK to operate thousands of robotaxis in Nevada

Tesla, Uber, and Waymo all get the OK to operate thousands of robotaxis in Nevada

Published by skeptic

Nevada, get ready for the robotaxis. The Nevada Transportation Authority unanimously approved three permits Thursday that will allow Tesla, Uber, and Waymo to operate commercial robotaxi services in Clark County, home to Las Vegas. Together, these permits would deploy up to 8,000 robotaxis across the county over the next 12 months. Tesla’s permit allows it to deploy up to 5,000 robotaxis, while Waymo is allowed operate up to 1,000 autonomous vehicles over the next year. Uber was also approved for 1,000 robotaxis, which it will operate through partnerships with Hyundai subsidiary Motional and Zoox. Zoox already holds an autonomous vehicle network company permit that allows it to operate 100 robotaxis. Whether these companies will be able to launch that many robotaxis is an unanswered question. Testimony from Tesla representatives and the other companies suggests the answer is no. “The 5,000 has always been a ceiling for us,” said Eric Early, Tesla’s Cybercab chief engineer, during the meeting. “I don’t think we’ll be in a position by this time next year to deploy 5,000 vehicles, and …

You can now ride a Chinese EV in the US as Waymo opens Zeekr Ojai to all

You can now ride a Chinese EV in the US as Waymo opens Zeekr Ojai to all

Published by skeptic

The next-generation Waymo Ojai, built by Zeekr. Source: Waymo Waymo is now letting all riders in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix hail its next-generation Ojai robotaxi — a vehicle built in China by Zeekr. That makes the Ojai one of the only ways for an American to ride in a Chinese-made EV, a car they still can’t legally buy for themselves. Waymo announced today that the Ojai, which had been limited to free early-access rides since it started offering trips in the new robotaxi on May 28, is now open to the general public across all three markets as the Alphabet unit begins commercial operations with the platform. Riders may be matched with an Ojai when one is available nearby. Waymo says it will eventually let passengers choose between the Ojai and its existing Jaguar I-PACE fleet. Advertisement – scroll for more content A Chinese EV you can’t buy — but can now ride The Ojai’s base vehicle is manufactured by Zeekr, the premium EV brand owned by China’s Geely Holding Group, on the …

TechCrunch Mobility: The custom chip driving Waymo’s robotaxi ambitions

Waymo’s cheaper, next-gen robotaxi is now open to all riders in these three cities

Published by skeptic

Waymo has opened its next-generation robotaxi to all riders in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco — a notable milestone for the Alphabet company as it pushes to expand its fleet with vehicles that are cheaper to build, operate, and maintain. For now, customers in these markets may be matched with the new robotaxi, called the Ojai (pronounced oh-hi) when they hail a ride. Once Waymo has enough Ojais in its fleet, riders will be able to choose between the new vehicle and the older Jaguar I-Pace robotaxi. Waymo has about 300 Ojai robotaxis in its commercial fleet today, according to a company spokesperson. The company said Wednesday that it plans to roll out the Ojai in Denver, Las Vegas, and San Diego later this year. For years, Waymo has relied on the all-electric, modified Jaguar I-Pace for its robotaxi fleet, which now operates in 11 U.S. cities. While the white, sensor-laden autonomous hatchback has become ubiquitous in markets such as San Francisco, it has been more of a stopgap in Waymo’s longer-term push toward …

Democrats Are Failing the Waymo Test

Democrats Are Failing the Waymo Test

Published by Sam Flores

The driverless future is here—but, to borrow from William Gibson, it’s not evenly distributed. Waymo’s self-driving robotaxis are available in cities in California, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas. Aside from California, where the technology originated, those are all red or purple states. In every other blue state, meanwhile, driverless taxis are still not allowed to operate. If you live in Miami or Dallas, you can summon a Waymo to get where you’re going. If you live in Boston or New York, you can’t. This is not an accident. In Democratic jurisdictions, a coalition of labor unions, anti-tech activists, and politicians have kept driverless vehicles off the streets. (Colorado, which passed a bill authorizing driverless vehicles in 2017, before the current backlash, is on track to become the exception later this year.) They argue that the new technology would make the roads more dangerous and throw millions of human drivers out of work, all to enrich a handful of tech oligarchs. A version of this fight is now playing out in Washington, D.C., where Kamala …