All posts tagged: Waymo

London gets closer to its first robotaxi service as Waymo begins testing

London gets closer to its first robotaxi service as Waymo begins testing

Published by skeptic

Waymo has started testing its autonomous vehicles on public roads in London as it prepares to launch a commercial robotaxi service in the city this year. The Alphabet-owned company has been working toward this moment for months. Waymo announced in October it planned to begin driving on London’s public roads. Waymo employees initially drove the vehicles manually to map the city before starting autonomous testing. For now, a fleet of about 100 all-electric Jaguar I-Pace equipped with Waymo’s self-driving system have a human safety operator behind the wheel. Waymo is testing its vehicles across a 100-square-mile area of the city, according to the company. The government must first finalize its trial program regulations before we can operate fully autonomously. We will work closely with regulators to ensure that our service reaches as many Londoners as possible. “Core driving AI generalizing very well,” Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov wrote in a LinkedIn post announcing the testing. “Autonomous testing now underway with specialists behind the wheel as we master local nuances and validate performance on UK roads — …

TechCrunch Mobility: Who is poaching all the self-driving vehicle talent?

TechCrunch Mobility: Who is poaching all the self-driving vehicle talent?

Published by skeptic

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, how AI is playing a part. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Normally, I have an analysis and then a little bird (my insidery bits curated just for you). But today I am combining them because I simply have too many little birds talking to me about the new talent wars. About seven years ago, the founder of a self-driving vehicle company told me that competing with the likes of Waymo for talent was “like a knife fight.” Now it seems there is a new poaching war going on, according to a handful of little birds. And it’s pushing base salaries (not including equity and other benefits) to between $300,000 and $500,000.  Here’s what is happening. The buzzy physical AI sector is filled with robotics and defense tech companies looking for people with a specific set of skills (to quote Liam Neeson). And these folks are mostly working at …

Police Officer Helplessly Waves Arms at Waymo That Careened Wrong Way Through Whataburger Drive-Thru

Police Officer Helplessly Waves Arms at Waymo That Careened Wrong Way Through Whataburger Drive-Thru

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Thousands of Waymo self-driving taxis have flooded the street of major urban centers across the country, where critics say they’ve quickly turned into a drain on city resources, with municipal agencies overrun with calls about stalled cars that block traffic or make sudden stops on busy roads. In the latest incident, the San Antonio Police Department (SAPD) was forced to intervene after a Waymo vehicle drove into the drive-thru lane of a Whataburger — from the wrong direction. A TikTok video recorded on Saturday shows an officer helplessly waving his arms at the driverless vehicle in an apparent attempt to get it unstuck. “Oh nothing, just our SAPD queens trying to direct a Waymo driving the wrong way in a Whataburger drive-thru,” the TikTok user wrote mockingly. Worst of all, as the SAPD told local news outlet MySA, the car was occupied when it drove into the drive-thru lane. The awkward interaction once again highlights that despite Waymo …

Street Smarts: Waymo and Waze Turn Driver Data Into Pothole Repairs

Street Smarts: Waymo and Waze Turn Driver Data Into Pothole Repairs

Published by skeptic

Hitting potholes while driving is never fun. They can cause headaches, car accidents and damage to your vehicle, culminating in a frustrating commute. Waymo, the robotaxi company, and Waze, the free, community-driven GPS navigation app, have come together to do something about potholes. On Thursday, the two companies announced a joint venture to target potholes that need patching. The new data-sharing pilot program will collect information on troublesome road conditions and communicate the necessary fixes to the city.  Waymo operates in 11 cities, and the pilot program will begin in five major markets: Austin, Texas; Atlanta; Los Angeles; Phoenix and the San Francisco Bay Area, with plans to expand to more cities in the future. So far, Waymo says it has tracked 500 potholes in the Bay Area alone. “As Waymo’s autonomous fleet travels across San Jose, we appreciate the collaboration with Waymo and Waze as we explore how technology can help identify issues like potholes faster so we can respond more efficiently,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said in an emailed statement. Departments of …

TechCrunch Mobility: ‘A stunning lack of transparency’

TechCrunch Mobility: ‘A stunning lack of transparency’

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! You might recall the congressional hearing last month that sparked criticism against Waymo over its use of remote assistance workers in the Philippines. We have covered that issue extensively. You can read about the company’s remote assistance and road assistance teams here and here.  Waymo tends to get the most attention because, well, those robotaxis are now operating commercially in 10 U.S. cities, with more coming soon. But the issue of remote assistance is not a Waymo issue. It’s an autonomous vehicle technology issue.  A new report from Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) makes my point.  Markey sent letters to seven U.S. companies — Aurora, May Mobility, Motional, Nuro, Tesla, Waymo, and Zoox — working on autonomous vehicle technology with a list of questions. He wanted to know how often these companies’ vehicles relied on input from remote staff.  They all refused …

Waymo Is Quickly Expanding to More Cities. Everything to Know About the Robotaxi

Waymo Is Quickly Expanding to More Cities. Everything to Know About the Robotaxi

Published by skeptic

Self-driving cars are slowly becoming less sci-fi and more real-world as companies such as Waymo rapidly expand into more areas.  Waymo, which is owned by Google’s parent Alphabet, now operates fully autonomous rides in a handful of cities across the US, with dozens more on the horizon, including in international locations. It first rolled out in areas with more temperate climates including Phoenix and San Francisco. But Waymo’s latest autonomous driving tech has allowed it to expand testing to cities with harsh winters, such as Minneapolis and Detroit, as well as rainy cities like Seattle and London. Passengers can hail a ride either via the Waymo app or Uber (or both), depending on the city. In November, Waymo began driving passengers on freeways in San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles, which can help to speed up journeys. Rides for the public currently happen aboard the all-electric Jaguar I-Pace, which uses Waymo’s fifth-generation autonomous driving technology. But Waymo is also deploying its modified Zeekr vehicle — dubbed Ojai — equipped with the sixth-generation Waymo Driver, which taps into AI advancements to detect more details and gauge …

Robotaxi companies refuse to say how often their AVs need remote help

Robotaxi companies refuse to say how often their AVs need remote help

Published by skeptic

In February, Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) sent letters to seven U.S. companies working on autonomous vehicle technology with a list of questions. He especially wanted to know how often these companies’ vehicles — operated by Aurora, May Mobility, Motional, Nuro, Tesla, Waymo, and Zoox — rely on input from remote staff. They all refused to say, according to the results of Markey’s investigation, which were released Tuesday. The information published by Markey’s office is the latest example of how hesitant autonomous vehicle companies are to share details about how their operations truly work — despite the fact that they are all experimenting with this technology on public roads. “This report has revealed a stunning lack of transparency from the AV companies around their use of [remote assistance operators] to help guide their AVs. The investigation exposed a patchwork of safety practices across the industry, with significant variation in operator qualifications, response times, and overseas staffing, all without any federal standards governing these operations,” Markey’s office wrote in its report. Markey said Tuesday that he is …

Tesla expands unsupervised ‘Robotaxi’ area in Austin with only a handful of cars

Tesla expands unsupervised ‘Robotaxi’ area in Austin with only a handful of cars

Published by skeptic

Tesla has expanded the geofence for its unsupervised “Robotaxi” service in Austin, Texas, growing the area where vehicles can operate without a safety monitor inside the car. But social media sightings indicate that only a handful of vehicles — somewhere between 4 and 8 Model Ys — are actually running without a human safety monitor. And even those still operate under remote supervision from Tesla. Expanding the map, not the fleet The service area expansion is part of a pattern Tesla has followed since launching its robotaxi pilot in Austin in June 2025. The overall robotaxi geofence in Austin has grown to roughly 245 square miles — about 12 times its original 20-square-mile footprint — through a series of expansions over the past several months. But there’s a massive disconnect between the size of the map and the number of vehicles actually operating without supervision. According to tracking data and social media sightings, the unsupervised fleet consists of fewer than a dozen vehicles, with only a few operating at the same time. Advertisement – scroll …

TechCrunch Mobility: When a robotaxi has to call 911

TechCrunch Mobility: When a robotaxi has to call 911

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 shared that it is now providing 500,000 paid robotaxi rides every week. That number is small compared to its human-driven ride-hailing counterparts, like Lyft and Uber. But that’s not what I found most interesting. The pace of growth in rides, new markets, and how it compares to its fleet size is what got my attention. We built a chart (which you can view below) that helps visualize the rapid scale.  That scale, however, does create new challenges, including the inevitably of the robotaxis becoming paralyzed, like so many did during the blackout in California in December. It got us wondering, what happens when a robotaxi gets stuck — and who unsticks it?  Senior reporter Sean O’Kane dug into Waymo’s system (which includes its own roadside assistance team), as well as at least six incidents in which first responders had to …

A School District Tried to Help Train Waymos to Stop for School Buses. It Didn’t Work

A School District Tried to Help Train Waymos to Stop for School Buses. It Didn’t Work

Published by skeptic

One of the purported advantages of self-driving car tech is that every car can learn from one vehicle’s mistakes. Here’s how Waymo puts it on its website: “The Waymo Driver learns from the collective experiences gathered across our fleet, including previous hardware generations.” But in Austin, Waymo’s vehicles struggled for months to learn how to stop for school buses as drivers picked up and dropped off children. An official with the Austin Independent School District (AISD) alleged that the vehicles had, in at least 19 instances, “illegally and dangerously” passed the district’s school buses while their red lights were flashing and their stop arms were extended rather than coming to complete stops, as the law requires. In early December, Waymo even issued a federal recall related to the incidents, acknowledging at least 12 of them to federal regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which oversees road safety. According to federal filings, engineers with the self-driving vehicle company had “developed software changes to address the behavior” weeks before. But even after the recall, …