Andrew J. Hawkins

As spotted by TechCrunch, the new expansion to Grand Theft Auto Online, dubbed “A Safehouse in the Hills,” includes a fictionalized version of Waymo called “KnoWay.” The cars are recognizable as autonomous thanks to their rooftop lidar sensors and their Waymo-esque logos. But the similarities end there, as the vehicles are shown in a trailer for the game dangerously swerving all over the road and even crashing through a billboard. The expansion is available starting December 10th.

The Wall Street Journal found that the rate is the same for serious recalls, such as faulty brakes, engine fires, or defective air bags. The failure to address recalls has lead to a number of preventable deaths: the Journal found at least 12 people who were killed in crashes in which the air bag failed to deploy.

Jaguar Land Rover caught a lot of flack for its new design language, including the polarizingly pastel Type 00 concept. And while most of the rage was pure culture war nonsense, the British automaker is still struggling with the fallout from a recent cyberattack that took down its manufacturing plant. Now JLR has reportedly canned its head of design Gerry McGovern. Not only that, but according to Autocar India, McGovern had to be escorted from the building. Ouch.

Waymo is going to start manually testing its vehicles in four new US cities: Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. Waymo plans to start by deploying manually driven vehicles, then fully autonomous ones, followed by select passenger trips, and finally, a public robotaxi service. (The company is already is driving autonomously with a safety driver in Philly.) Waymo has signaled it hopes to launch in over 20 cities in the coming years. Of course, not every city is welcoming the robotaxis with open arms.

Uber customers can now be matched with a robotaxi operated by Avride in a small, 9-square mile section of Dallas. The vehicles, Hyundai Ioniq 5s, still have safety drivers for now as part of a phased introduction, with fully driverless operations coming later. The fleet will also be small at first, but will grow to “hundreds” over time, the company says. This is Uber’s latest robotaxi deployment in the US, following the partnership with Waymo in Austin and Atlanta.

I’ve said this before, but as Waymo continues to scale and grow, we’re going to see more of this kind of stuff. Last month, it was a beloved neighborhood cat who was killed after running underneath a Waymo in San Francisco. This week, one of its robotaxis wandered into the middle of a police arrest in LA. Waymo confirms its car briefly intruded on a police standoff while ferrying a passenger, but that it cleared the scene in 15 seconds.