#waymo

#waymo

The company announced today that it will start offering robotaxi rides to a select group of passengers traveling to and from the San Francisco International Airport, a major step in Waymo's effort to increase its footprint in the Bay Area. The company plans on gradually growing the number of riders until anyone who wants to can hail a Waymo at the airport, which the company says should happen "in the coming months."

In the wake of what was surely Waymo's greatest SF screw-up yet, SF Supervisor Bilal Mahmood (of all people!) is the first local elected official calling for a probe into how Waymos stalled out all over town Saturday. As of 3:30 pm Monday afternoon, the fallout from Saturday's massive SF PG&E outage still continues, as thousands in SF still don't have their power back on.

Videos circulating on social media showed Waymo robotaxis clogging up intersections, addled by the sudden absence of guidance from traffic lights. In one video posted to TikTok, a Waymo robotaxi sporting its telltale rooftop cluster of sensors blocks a busy intersection as human drivers stream around it on both sides. "This car did not move for 10+ min - it only left when the passengers ditched the car," the TikTok user who caught the footage wrote in the caption.