Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, and Substack. We now have transcripts available too (Click on the “transcripts” button in the top right corner of this post to access them).
In today’s episode, I’m speaking with Brad Templeton, a longtime speaker and consultant in the autonomy space, who has advised companies including Waymo, Zoox, Cruise, and Starship since their early days. He also runs Robocars.com and writes about self-driving technology for Forbes.
We talk through the recent Waymo outage in San Francisco that left robotaxis stuck across the city, what actually happened, and how the situation unfolded. We break down the timeline of the incident, the root cause of the incident, and why remote operators became such a bottleneck during the outage.
We also discuss how transparent AV companies should be when things go wrong, what Waymo can learn from past incidents at Cruise, and whether systems like Waymo are ready to handle ‘edge cases’ such as dead intersections. Brad explains how remote assistance works in practice, how Waymo uses it today, and where its limits start to show.
The conversation then zooms out to compare Waymo’s performance to human drivers, how outages like this shape public perception, and what role regulators could play in improving robotaxi safety going forward. We finish up with Brad’s thoughts on what this incident means for Waymo, and what it says about the current state of autonomy more broadly.
Chapters
(00:00) Introduction to Brad Templeton
(01:01) The great Waymo outage of 2025, and facts
(06:05) Transparency with AV companies and lessons from Cruise
(07:06) Can Waymo handle dead intersections?
(09:25) Timeline of the Waymo outage
(10:30) The main cause of the Waymo blackout, and teleoperation
(13:30) How remote operation works with robotaxis
(15:50) Remote operation at Waymo
(18:50) How Waymo could improve for future occurrences, and lessons from the past/present
(39:24) Waymo vs human drivers, and public perception
(42:50) How regulators could help improve robotaxi safety
(54:00) Conclusion and final thoughts
Notes/Links:
Brad’s Forbes article on the Waymo outage, mentioned at the 03:00 timestamp (link, no paywall).
You can also find Brad’s articles on Forbes (link).
Waymo’s article explaining the outage, mentioned at the 10:04 timestamp (link).
-Harry
Thanks for being a subscriber to The Driverless Digest! If you enjoyed this episode, feel free to share it with someone who might like it too. And if this email was forwarded to you, why not subscribe and stick around :)
