Are robotaxis the future? Or instead, the past?
Are robotaxis the future? Or instead, the past?
Cars, being fast moving and heavy, are quite dangerous. They should be well regulated for safety. But it turns out regulations can be bought and paid for by lobbying money…
East Bay Times reports on new potential California legislation that would require to have adequate local technicians, one for every three self-driving cars. This is due to the disaster traffic jams that Waymo robotaxis caused during the San Francisco power outage in December '25.
Sam Schwartz and Kelly McGuinness report in StreetsBlog NYC on how that now Waymo robotaxis are paused that this is an opportune time to look into whether robotaxis are useful in the first place. A key point is that if safety is the goal then clearly public transit should be promoted instead.
The City reports that Waymo's permits to test some of their robotaxis in New York City has ended. And their permission to run vehicles in the state of New York has reached a dead end. NYC is simply not read for robotaxis, given they have far more cars there than is useful. It appears Waymo never expected to hit such a speed bump in their deployment.
NY Times reports on how Baidu had a major outage in Wuhan, stranding passengers in the middle of busy streets and even causing at least one collision. In fact, robotaxis from China have had a very questionable safety record.
Wired reports that Tesla acknowledges that their "robotaxis" are sometimes actually driven by humans. This is of course not a surprise given the Tesla Optimus robots are known to actually be just teleoperated puppets. Certainly is peculiar that the company is valued at $1.4T based on robotaxis and humanoid robots.
Benzinga reports that the California Public Utilities Commission has declared that Tesla does not have true autonomous capability and therefore does not have an actual robotaxi system. Whoops. You can always count on Elon to not speak the truth.
NBC Bay Area reports on how rideshare drivers filed a formal complaint with the CPUC alleging that Waymo "has been knowingly violating the conditions of its state permit by transporting unaccompanied minors." This is a known and ongoing problem that Waymo has acknowledged occurs.
Bloomberg reports that with autonomous vehicles we should expect a significant increase in traffic, making it yet another tragedy of the commons.
NY Times reports on an additional issue with riding in a Waymo robotaxi: one might be the subject of a great deal of hostility.
NY Times reports on how automous trucks are coming to certain highways (Texas) soon. But no one knows if they will cause serious safety problems due to phantom braking.
FastCompany looks at a database of problems the San Francisco transit agency has had with Waymos, and it turns out to be far worse than Waymo lets on to.
BBC reports on how and why the San Francisco group Safe Street Rebel is disabling Waymo vehicles.
SF Standard reports that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors grilled Waymo on the epic disaster when 1,500 Waymos got stuck during a power outage. Waymo has still not acknowledged that a large part of the problem was that cellular communications completely went down for swaths of San Francisco once the backup batteries for the cell towers ran out of juice. Waymo's only solution for this problem is not talking about.
We already knew that remote operators were involved in driving Waymo "autonomous" vehicles. But this NTSB report provides a concrete example of the remote operator dangerously providing incorrect information, causing the Waymo robotaxi to pass by a stopped school bus. Credit goes to Phil Koopman for calling out this problem.
NY Times reports on how the state of New York is expected to withdraw its proposal for expanding autonomous vehicles outside of New York City. The humans (mostly labor groups and taxi drivers) have spoken!
