Multiple Waymos Stall Again in San Francisco on 4th of July
Tesla Robotaxi now available in Miami, Feds demand AV companies stop interfering with first responders, and Zoox doubles monthly active users between January and June
This week’s edition is brought to you by TaskUs — powering safe, scalable autonomous vehicle and AI operations through human-in-the-loop expertise.
Top Stories of the Week
Waymo cars stranded on San Francisco streets as Fourth of July gridlock drains batteries (link). There are a bunch of videos from this incident, including one where a Waymo drove over a firework, and another where a gentleman counted nearly 20 stuck Waymos in a row.
It’s been a few days since this incident and Waymo still hasn’t shared more details about what happened. How many cars actually got stuck? How many had to be towed because they ran out of battery? Why weren’t they able to make it to chargers? And what are they changing so this doesn’t happen again (again)?
This also comes just a few months after the PG&E outage in San Francisco left a number of Waymos stranded. Different cause, but a similar outcome.
Here’s what Waymo had to say immediately following the incident:
“Major traffic disruptions, a high volume of travelers, and unplanned road closures contributed to unexpected congestion,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. The spokesperson said Waymo’s roadside assistance team worked to clear the vehicles, adding that the company is “evaluating ways to strengthen Waymo’s resilience in major traffic disruptions.”
Other Stuff
Tesla Robotaxi now available in Miami (link), and they say it’s unsupervised (link).
Tesla’s Robotaxi Push Tests New Blueprint for Scaling Fast (link, no paywall). Good recap, but it leaves out one important detail: Tesla’s driverless fleet in Austin is reportedly down to around 14 active vehicles, with roughly 50 Robotaxis being deployed overall. That’s still tiny compared to Waymo, which has around 250 vehicles operating in the same market.
Waymo to start driverless rides in 4 more U.S. markets as expansion accelerates (link).
Alphabet’s robotaxi division will soon start offering fully autonomous rides in San Diego, Las Vegas, Tampa, Florida, and Denver, the company said Wednesday. While the launch will initially be for Alphabet employees, the rollout will then extend to the public.
Nexar and Nauto to Merge, Creating the Independent Infrastructure Platform for Physical AI (link).
Waymo registers entities in France, the Netherlands, Spain and Germany (link).
Feds demand autonomous vehicle companies stop interfering with first responders (link).
“Let me be clear: the inability to detect and appropriately respond to such situations represents a functional insufficiency,” Morrison’s letter reads. “Emergency scenes are not rare or extreme ‘edge cases.’ As such, NHTSA is today issuing a call to action for AV developers and operators to immediately focus their resources on fixing this issue.”
The Human Edge in AV: Scaling Swift Emergency Response
TaskUs partners with the top autonomous vehicle (AV) and AI organizations to manage the human-critical workflows that make advanced systems safer and more reliable. When one of the leading companies deployed its fleets in new cities, they also needed to scale emergency response teams. TaskUs helped by deploying expert operators, creating 24/7 incident frameworks and implementing a unique fatigue management program. Get all the details and results in their case study below.
One robotaxi player has grown its share of users so far in 2026 — and it’s not Waymo (link, no paywall).
‘FSD would be twice as useful in neighborhoods if I could actually talk to the car and tell it which driveway to pull into, the same way I would with a person driving me home’ (link). Tesla says they’re working on it.
‘Waymo has launched freeways in Austin on the Uber app!!’ (link). This may be a sign that freeway rides are coming back soon.
The robotaxi law that could ban Tesla (link, no paywall). Happy to see Rani Molla at a new outlet. This reminds me though of Lyft’s stance and what I wrote at the time: “I’d rather see an outcome-based framework that judges systems on real-world safety performance, not the specific technology or sensor stack they use.”
A bill expected to come up for a vote later this year would require companies seeking to operate fully autonomous vehicles in New Jersey to use cameras plus two other sensing technologies, most commonly lidar and radar… The measure would also effectively prevent Tesla’s camera-only Robotaxi system from operating in New Jersey unless the company changed its hardware.
Consumers Embrace Driverless Delivery, But Infrastructure Lags (link, no paywall).
‘I’ve lived long enough to get rug pulled by an autonomous vehicle’ (link). It’s hard to compete with Uber’s density and ETAs, but Waymo can stand out with instant matching and ETA accuracy. The typical “Waymo experience” feels especially awesome because Uber’s matching and pickup algorithm can be so inconsistent and is one of the top complaints riders have. Thus, Waymo really needs to avoid developing that same reputation with situations like this.
I used a self-driving car for 100 days. These are the mistakes it kept making (link). I was surprised by how many issues the author experienced over 100 days. It’s a much more negative experience than you typically hear from Tesla FSD supporters, though it’s hard to know how representative either perspective is. The best way to form an opinion is probably to try it yourself.
We recorded more than 500 safety-critical events where the system required driver intervention or revealed an important limitation in how it interpreted the road environment. And In more than 100 days of daily testing, we did not complete a single trip in which FSD drove independently from start to finish without intervention.
Not All Miles are Equal: Why Time and Location Matter When Benchmarking Autonomous Safety (link).
Rivian R2 spotted with LiDAR near HQ, looks better than most LiDARs (link).
Robotaxi Companies Need To Stop It With The Right Seat Safety Drivers (link, no paywall).
What else we're reading/listening to
The AV Market Strategist by Daniel Abreu Marques: Waymo’s Grand European Expansion & The Waymo-Uber Break-Up Begins in Phoenix (link).
The Real Impact of Autonomy Will Come From Buses (link). Our latest guest piece where Barak Sas analyzes the impact of autonomy on buses, the opportunities it unlocks, and what the industry still needs to get right.
Einride’s Autonomous Freight Strategy with CTO Henrik Green (link). My latest podcast where we discussed how Einride is redefining autonomous freight with their cabless autonomous truck design, their hybrid network of autonomous and human-driven vehicles, and how the company combines electric trucking, autonomy, and logistics into a single platform, among other things.
AV/Humans behaving badly
Waymo calls San Mateo police on teens for drinking, shooting toy guns from driverless vehicle (link). Good one Waymo!
‘First time getting in an Ojai and seeing the front screen not working’ (link). Seems like there are still quite a few bugs with the Ojai despite them testing it for what feels like forever.
Asleep at the wheel: BC driver caught sleeping in self-driving Tesla on busy highway (link).
Shout-outs
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Neat Jobs
City Fleet Manager - Autonomous Vehicle at Freenow (link) via Swagat Chopra.
Solutions Architect at Wayve (link) via Masa Kameyama.
Program Manager, Driver and Vehicle Compliance at Waymo (link) via Karen Isgrigg.
Autonomous Vehicle Partnership Manager at Lyft (link) via William Lynn.
Principal Engineer Tech Lead at Motional (link) via Gayatri K Sukumar.
Job Moves
Balajee Kannan: Motional -> May Mobility (link).
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Until next week :)
-Harry
How could the designers not have programmed in “avoid emergency vehicles? I guess the same way Waymo didn’t program in avoid large standing water pools.