Waymo

Bloomberg has the details on some of the gnarlier aspects of a driverless car service, including finding blood, puke, and fecal matter in the vehicles. Emergency responders have received almost 100 calls about passengers falling asleep in their Waymos, and then failing to wake up at their destination. This story reminds me of one I helped report nearly six years ago about Waymo contractors discovering hypodermic needles in the cars. The more things change…

Both ABC7 and KTLA 5 report that on Saturday afternoon, police arrested this man for vandalism after he was seen smashing up a Waymo at an East Hollywood intersection on Saturday.

Two teenagers who were drinking alcohol and shooting a toy gun out the window of their Waymo were arrested last week after being tricked by a remote operator into thinking the vehicle had mechanical problems.

The company is ramping up testing in San Diego, Las Vegas, Tampa, and Denver with the introduction of rider-only operations. Only Waymo employees will get to ride in the vehicles for now, but the company says it expects to kick off public trips soon. Waymo is also testing its newest vehicle, the Hyundai Ioniq 5, with a safety specialist present. No word on when the Hyundais will join the robotaxi fleet.

Because otherwise your Waymo might “snitch” to the cops, as in the case of two 15-year-olds in California. According to 404 Media, the two teens were detained after the robotaxi company reported them for drinking and shooting Orbeez from the vehicle. Seems like the kind of behavior you may invite when you open up your unsupervised ridehailing service to the underage. But also Waymos are covered in cameras, inside and out, and have been known to report wrongdoing to the cops. Basically they’re roving surveillance machines!

The Alphabet-owned company was previously only giving rides to people on its interest list. Now it will be open to anyone who downloads the Waymo app. The robotaxi operator says its also testing out rides to Nashville International Airport, and hopes to begin offering service soon. And coming later this year, Waymo will be an option in the Lyft app in Nashville.

The recall comes just weeks after Waymo vehicles drove past ramp closure signs in Arizona and entered closed lanes in San Francisco, according to a filing with the NHTSA. The company paused freeway service last month due to the issue, which it’s fixing with a software update.

The 5,458-acre site in Wittman, Arizona, was once the centerpiece of Apple’s ambition to build its own self-driving car. But after Tim Cook pulled the plug on Project Titan, the tech company put the testing ground up for sale. The deal, recorded June 5th in Maricopa County filings, is for $220 million — nearly twice the $125 million Apple paid for it in 2021. And it comes as Waymo expands its presence in Arizona, including new office space in Tempe.

Virginia doesn’t allow autonomous vehicles yet, but Wired reports the company told state officials in a meeting this week its vehicles are in the state, mapping Arlington and Alexandria with their sensors. Updated laws governing self-driving vehicles are still under discussion, but it’s preparing to bring its vehicles one step closer to Washington, D.C., despite public skepticism and some recent issues.

First, Waymo vehicles needed a software update to stop trying to drive through flooded roads. Then, a neighborhood in Atlanta was overwhelmed by empty Waymos that caused a traffic jam in a cul-de-sac.

Business Insider thinks so, pointing to some recent evidence like Uber’s CTO tweeting about a “scary Waymo moment” and an Uber white paper that emphasizes a hybrid model of human- and robot-powered rides over an AV only model. Driverless Digest’s Harry Campbell is also predicting that Waymo and Uber’s partnership may be running out of steam.

Di Jin says the robo taxi took off with his luggage still in the trunk. But the real issue is how the company handled the issue. First, it told him the cab couldn’t be turned around to return his items, then it tried to charge him for shipping.

Emergency response officials from San Francisco and Austin met with regulators from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in a private meeting last month to clear the air about robotaxis, according to a recording obtained by Wired. Waymo vehicles are “freezing” in front of fire stations and committing more traffic violations, the officials said. Waymo declined to attend the meeting.

The company said today its robotaxis in the two Florida cities would be available to anyone using its ridehail app. Waymo typically invites select riders on a rolling basis before opening up its service to anyone with the app. The company take riders on Miami’s freeways, so routes could be a little quicker than usual.

The robotaxi company said today that it will start accepting its first public riders in Music City. Customers, who will be invited to ride on a rolling basis, can initially hail a ride through the Waymo app, and then later matched with a vehicle through the Lyft app. Lyft will also handle fleet services, such as cleaning, maintenance, and EV charging. Waymo first started testing its vehicles in Nashville in early 2025. For those keeping score, the company now operates commercially in 11 cities.

The company has a roadside assistance team that it dispatches to move vehicles when they get trapped. But sometimes Waymo needs emergency responders to actually get behind the wheel. TechCrunch got the 911 dispatches and incident reports from California:

The robotaxi company has yet to obtain permits for driverless commercial operations in either city, but it typically deploys manually driven vehicles to gather mapping data while its applications move through the bureaucracy in the background. The news comes after Waymo announced the commencement of driverless operations in four new cities in Texas and Florida earlier this week, bringing its total robotaxi markets in the US to 10.

The robotaxi company said today that it will start accepting its first public riders in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando. First up will be customers from those four cities who have downloaded the Waymo app; other customers will be added on a rolling basis, the company said. That brings Waymo’s total number of markets to 10, which is double from where it was a couple of months ago.

Since Waymo doesn’t have a vehicle with automatic doors, it has to pay on gig workers for help. (The Washington Post covered this phenomenon recently.) Just another example of the invisible human labor that’s required to keep these autonomous systems afloat.

Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana told Bloomberg the robotaxi company was on track to reach the 1 million weekly rides milestone by the end of 2026. The company is currently provides about 400,000 rides per week across six US cities. Waymo just announced that its sixth-generation vehicle is going to start accepting passengers in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Chinese automotive publication Gasgoo says the new companies are in talks to dramatically increase Waymo’s fleet of Hyundai EVs. The deal could be worth around $2.5 billion, assuming $50,000 per vehicle. But even if the report is true, don’t expect Waymo’s robotaxi fleet to suddenly grow by 50,000: the company has said it plans on adding only 2,000 more vehicles in 2026, for a total fleet size of 3,500. Waymo is currently testing and validating the Ioniq 5 and the Zeekr RT as its next two robotaxis.

As Waymo uses AI-generated 3D worlds to simulate driverless cars’ encounters with tornadoes, floods, and even elephants, one commenter wonders if they could try AI school buses next.

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts and articles claiming that Waymo’s robotaxis are being secretly controlled by teleoperators in the Philippines. The claims stem from a Senate Commerce Committee hearing this week, during which a top Waymo executive told Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) that the company employs some remote operators overseas. But he was also clear that those operators aren’t actually controlling the vehicles. I watched all two hours of the hearing, and here’s what Mauricio Peña, Waymo’s chief safety officer, had to say: