Waymo recalls 1,200 self-driving cars because of minor collisions

Waymo is recalling about1,200 vehicles due to a software bug that caused its self-driving cars to collide with certain roadway barriers, according to safety officials.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a Monday announcement that the voluntary recall had already been remedied by late December with a fix to the company's 5th Generation Automated Driving Systems.
Waymo said that while the recall was submitted last week, it doesn't impact any of its vehicles currently on the road. The recall only applies to software released before November, which was updated that same month, and caused minor collisions with chains, gates, and roadway barriers. Nobody was injured in the crashes.
'Waymo (GOOGL) provides more than 250,000 paid trips every week in some of the most challenging driving environments in the U.S.,' a Waymo spokesperson told Quartz. 'We hold ourselves to a high safety standard, and our record of reducing injuries over tens of millions of fully autonomous miles driven shows our technology is making roads safer.'
Waymo currently operates its robotaxis in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin. It is owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet.
Last week, Amazon's robotaxi company Zoox (AMZN) issued a voluntary software recall following a crash in Las Vegas.
Zoox said in a post that it made the decision after an incident where one of its unoccupied robotaxis hit a passenger vehicle. No injuries were reported in the incident and and only minor damage occurred to both vehicles, the company said.
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Forbes

21 minutes ago

• Forbes

Tesla Misses Robotaxi Launch Date, Goes With Safety Drivers

A vehicle Tesla is using for robotaxi testing purposes in Austin, Texas, US, on Friday, June 20, ... More 2025.. Photographer: Eli Hartman/Bloomberg Tesla's much-anticipated June 22 'no one in the vehicle' Robotaxi launch in Austin is not ready. Instead, Tesla has announced to its invite-only passengers that it will operate a limited service with Tesla employees on board the vehicle to maintain safety. Tesla will use an approach that was used in 2019 by Russian robotaxi company Yandex, putting the safety driver in the passengers seat rather than the driver's seat. (Yandex's robotaxi was divested from Russian and now is called AVRide.) Having an employee on board, commonly called a safety driver, is the approach that every robocar company has used for testing, including testing of passenger operations. Most companies spend many years (Waymo spent a decade) testing with safety drivers, and once they are ready to take passengers, there are typically some number of years testing in that mode, though the path to removing the safety driver depends primarily on evaluation of the safety case for the vehicle, and less on the presence of passengers. Tesla has put on some other restrictions--rides will be limited to 6am to midnight (the opposite of Cruise's first operations, which were only at night) and riders come from an invite-only list (as was also the case for Waymo, and Cruise and others in their early days.) Rides will be limited to a restricted service area (often mistakenly called a 'geofence') which avoids complex and difficult streets and intersections. Rides will be unavailable in inclement weather, which also can happen with other vehicles, though fairly rarely today. Tesla FSD is known to disable itself if rain obscures some of its cameras--only the front cameras have a rain wiper. The fleet will be small. Waymo started testing with safety drivers in 2009, gave rides to passengers with safety drivers in 2017, and without safety drivers in 2020 in the Phoenix area. Cruise had a much shorter period with passengers and safety drivers. Motional has given rides for years but has never removed the safety driver. Most Chinese companies spent a few years doing it. Giving passengers rides requires good confidence in the safety of the system+safety driver combination, but taking the passengers does not alter how well the vehicle drives, except perhaps around pick-up and drop-off. (While a vehicle is more at liberty to make hard stops with no passengers on board, I am aware of no vehicle which takes advantage of this.) As such we have no information on whether Tesla will need their safety drivers for a month or a several years, or even forever with current hardware. Passenger's Seat vs. Driver's Seat Almost all vehicles use a safety driver behind the wheel. Tesla's will be in the passenger seat, in a situation similar to that used by driving instructors for student human drivers. While unconfirmed by Tesla, the employee in the passenger seat can grab the wheel and steer. Because stock Teslas have fully computer controlled brake and acceleration, they might equip the driver with electronic pedals. Some reports have suggested they have a hand controller or other ways to command the vehicle to brake. There is no value to putting the safety driver on the passengers side. It is no safer than being behind the wheel, and believed by most to be less safe because of the unusual geometr20 November 2024, Berlin: A prototype of the Tesla Cybercab stands in a showroom in the Mall of Berlin. Photo: Hannes P. Albert/dpa (Photo by Hannes P Albert/picture alliance via Getty Images)y. It's hard to come up with any reason other than just how it looks. Tesla can state the vehicles have 'nobody in the driver's seat' in order to attempt to impress the public. The driving school system works, so it's not overtly dangerous, but in that case there's an obvious reason for it that's not optics. Tesla Cybercab concept. With only 2 seats and no controls, not very suitable for a safety driver. ... More These are not being used in Tesla's Austin pilot. That said, most robocar prototypes, including Tesla supervised FSD, are reasonably safe with capable safety drivers. A negligent and poorly managed safety driver in an Uber ATG test vehicle killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona when the safety driver completely ignored her job, but otherwise these systems have a good record. The combination of Tesla Autopilot and a supervising driver has a reasonable record. (The record is not nearly as good as some people think Tesla claims. Every quarter, Tesla publishes a deeply misleading report comparing the combination of Tesla Autopilot plus supervisor to the general crash rate, but they report airbag deployments for the Teslas mostly on freeways and compare it without general crash numbers on all roads for general drivers. This makes it seem Autopilot is many times safer than regular drivers when it's actually similar, a serious and deceitful misrepresentation.) As noted, Yandex, now AVRide, has used safety drivers in the passenger seat, and has done so in Austin--also speculated to be mostly for optics, though there are some legal jurisdictions where companies shave made this move because the law requires safety drivers and they hope to convey an aura of not needing them. This has also been the case in China.) When Cruise did their first 'driverless' demo ride in San Francisco, they had an employee in the passengers seat. So Tesla has been ready to run with safety drivers for years. What's tested here isn't the safety of the cars, but all the complexity of handling passengers, including the surprising problems of good PuDo (Pick-up/Drop-off.) Whether Teslas can operate a safe robotaxi with nobody onboard, particularly with their much more limited sensor hardware, remains to be seen. Other Paths To Launch Tesla apparently experimented with different paths to getting out on the road before they are ready to run unsupervised. In particular, vehicles were seen with the passenger seat safety driver, and also being followed by a 'chase car' with two on board. Reports also came of Tesla planning for 'lots of tele-ops' including not just remote assistance (as all services do) but remote supervision including remote driving. We may speculate that Tesla evaluated many different approaches: Because Elon Musk promised 'nobody in the car' and 'unsupervised' in the most recent Tesla earnings call, there was great pressure to produce #1, but the Tesla team must have concluded they could not do that yet, and made the right choice, though #3 is a better choice than #4. They also did not feel up to #2, which is commonly speculated to be what other companies have done on their first launch, later graduating to #1 #5 just looks goofy, I think the optics would not work, and it's also challenging. Remote driving is real and doable--in spite of the latency and connectivity issues of modern data networks--but perhap Tesla could not get it ready in time. All teams use remote assistance operators who do not drive the cars, but can give them advice when they get confused by a situation, and stop and ask for advice. Even Waymo recently added a minor remote driving ability for low-speed 'get the car out off the road' sort of operations. I have recommended this for some time. It is worth noting the contrast beween Cruise's 'night only' launch and Tesla's mostly-daytime one. Cruise selected the night because there is less traffic and complexity. LIDARs see very well at night. Tesla's camera-based system has very different constraints at night and many fear it's inferior then. On the other hand Tesla will operate in some night hours and with more cars and pedestrians on the street. The question for Tesla will be whether the use of safety drivers is a very temporary thing, done just because they weren't quite ready but needed to meet the announced date, or a multi-year program as it has been for most teams. Tesla is famous for not meeting the forecast ship dates for its FSD system, so it's not shocking that this pattern continues. The bigger question is whether they can do it at all. Tesla FSD 13, the version available to Tesla owners, isn't even remotely close to robotaxi ready. If Tesla has made a version which is closer, through extra work, training and severe limitations of the problem space, it's still a big accomplishment. This will be seen in the coming months. Two robocar teams had severe interactions with pedestrians. Both those teams, and one pedestrian, are dead. Tesla knows they must not make mistakes.

Yahoo

3 hours ago

• Yahoo

Elon Musk pins his hopes on a fleet of robotaxis as Tesla sales tank

Elon Musk's long-touted vision of a widespread Tesla "robotaxi" fleet appears to be taking a tentative step towards reality, with a small-scale test run of self-driving cabs set to begin in Austin, Texas, this Sunday. This limited deployment comes after years of ambitious, yet unfulfilled, pledges from the billionaire entrepreneur. In 2019, Musk promised driverless Tesla robotaxis would be on the road "next year," a commitment he reiterated in 2020 for the following year. Despite these repeated missed deadlines, the promises continued, with Musk stating as recently as January last year, "Next year for sure, we'll have over a million robotaxis." The current Austin trial, involving a "small squad" of vehicles, stands in stark contrast to the millions he once envisioned. While this marks a tangible move, reaching a fleet of a million robotaxis is projected to take "a year or more." However, the service could see expansion later this year, contingent on the success of the initial Austin demonstration. The stakes couldn't be higher, nor the challenges. While Musk was making those 'next year' promises, rival Waymo was busy deploying driverless taxis in Los Angeles, San Diego, Austin and other cities by using a different technology that allowed it to get to market faster. It just completed its 10 millionth paid ride. Boycotts related to Musk's politics have tanked Tesla's sales. Rival electric vehicle makers with newly competitive models have stolen market share. And investors are on edge after a $150 billion stock wipeout when Musk picked a social media fight with a U.S. president overseeing federal car regulators who could make the robotaxi rollout much more difficult. The stock has recovered somewhat after Musk said he regretted some of his remarks. Tesla shareholders have stood by Musk over the years because he's defied the odds by building a successful standalone electric vehicle company — self-driving car promises aside — and making them a lot of money in the process. A decade ago, Tesla shares traded for around $18. The shares closed Friday at $322. Musk says the Austin test will begin modestly enough, with just 10 or 12 vehicles picking up passengers in a limited area. But then it will quickly ramp up and spread to other cities, eventually reaching hundreds of thousands if not a million vehicles next year. Some Musk watchers on Wall Street are skeptical. 'How quickly can he expand the fleet?' asks Garrett Nelson, an analyst at CFRA. 'We're talking maybe a dozen vehicles initially. It's very small." Morningstar's Seth Goldstein says Musk is being classic Musk: Promising too much, too quickly. 'When anyone in Austin can download the app and use a robotaxi, that will be a success, but I don't think that will happen until 2028," he says. 'Testing is going to take a while.' Musk's tendency to push up the stock high with a bit of hyperbole is well known among investors. In 2018, he told Tesla stockholders he had 'funding secured' to buy all their shares at a massive premium and take the company private. But he not only lacked a written commitment from financiers, according to federal stock regulators who fined him, he hadn't discussed the loan amount or other details with them. More recently, Musk told CNBC in May that Tesla was experiencing a 'major rebound' in demand. A week later an auto trade group in Europe announced sales had plunged by half. Musk has come under fire for allegedly exaggerating the ability of the system used for its cars to drive themselves, starting with the name. Full Self-Driving is a misnomer. The system still requires drivers to keep their eyes on the road because they may need to intervene and take control at any moment. Federal highway safety regulators opened an investigation into FSD last year after several accidents, and the Department of Justice has conducted its own probe, though the status of that is not known. Tesla has also faced lawsuits over the feature, some resulting in settlements, other dismissed. In one case, a judge ruled against the plaintiffs but only because they hadn't proved Musk 'knowingly' made false statements. Musk says the robotaxis will be running on an improved version of Full Self-Driving and the cabs will be safe. He also says the service will be able to expand rapidly around the country. His secret weapon: Millions of Tesla owners now on the roads. He says an over-the-air software update will soon allow them to turn their cars into driverless cabs and start a side business while stuck at the office for eight hours or on vacation for a week. 'Instead of having your car sit in the parking lot, your car could be earning money,' Musk said earlier this year, calling it an Airbnb model for cars. 'You will be able to add or subtract your car to the fleet.' Musk says Tesla also can move fast to deploy taxis now because of his decision to rely only on cameras for the cars to navigate, unlike Waymo, which has gone a more expensive route by supplementing its cameras with lasers and radar. 'Tesla will have, I don't know,' Musk mused in an conference call with investors, '99% market share or something ridiculous.' Given Waymo's head start and potential competition from Amazon and others, dominating the driverless market to that extent could be a reach. But Dan Ives, a Wedbush Securities analyst and big Musk fan, says this time Musk may actually pull it off because of Tesla's ability to scale up quickly. And even skeptics like Morningstar's Goldstein acknowledge that Musk occasionally does gets things right, and spectacularly so. He upended the car industry by getting people to buy expensive electric vehicles, brought his Starlink satellite internet service to rural areas and, more recently, performed a gee-whiz trick of landing an unmanned SpaceX rocket on a platform back on earth. 'Maybe his timelines aren't realistic," Goldstein says, 'but he can develop futuristic technology products.'

Yahoo

3 hours ago

• Yahoo

Why Volkswagen is convinced Waymo and Tesla are vulnerable in the $500 billion robotaxi race — ‘not a winner take all market'

The German carmaker is preparing to enter the market for autonomous ride-hailing services next year with its Volkswagen ID. Buzz AD. But instead of competing against existing transportation providers, it aims to work with them as a partner. The different approach comes amid continued popular resentment towards robotaxis. When Big Tech first began deploying self-driving cars to San Francisco two years ago, companies encountered something unusual—popular resistance. Angry residents would sabotage the robotaxis with the help of traffic cones, while the city's fire department chief herself would regularly malign them as a dangerous nuisance. Even today, during the recent outbreak of civil unrest in Los Angeles over mass deportations, protesters caused hundreds of thousands of dollars when they deliberately torched Waymo cars. One old economy company preparing to enter the autonomous ride-hailing space is taking a completely different approach when it launches next year. Germany's Volkswagen is wagering society at large is increasingly fed up with the collateral damage left behind by Silicon Valley's move-fast-and-break-things mentality. 'Our approach is different—we deliberately want to act as partners that build upon existing infrastructure,' VW Group executive Sascha Meyer told Fortune during a test drive of its robotaxi. 'A key point for social acceptance we believe is being a service provider whose presence is desired precisely because we will not be competing with systems already in place.' This week, VW revealed the series production version of its autonomous ride-hailing cab based on its retro-styled VW ID. Buzz EV microbus. Packaged together with the requisite fleet management software and digital customer booking platform, it wants to offer local transportation authorities and other commercial fleets a turnkey solution that can be integrated effortlessly into their service. While a Waymo or a Tesla plan to compete with existing providers, the German carmaker aims to be an equal partner working hand in glove with communities that want their help. Even if the first roughly 500 vehicles won't be deployed to Uber for use in Los Angeles until next year, VW believes the race for market share is only just beginning. It's convinced there will be more than enough demand to grab a bite out of the €350 billion-€450 billion in revenue McKinsey projects for autonomous ride-hailing services in North America and Europe by 2035. That's more than half a trillion dollars worth of growth over the next 10 years, potentially. Meyer runs MOIA, the mobility services subsidiary of the VW Group which will offer a high-tech version of the zero-emission Volkswagen ID. Buzz electric minivan complete with the backend software ecosystem around it. Fortune had a chance to ride along with Meyer in one as the robotaxi navigated its way—with a safety driver behind the wheel at all times—through the busy streets of Hamburg. Here in Germany's second-largest city, Volkswagen has quietly been testing the technology for several years now thanks to the active support of city officials. The white label service Volkswagen has in mind means all customers need to do is slap their logo on the vehicle and adorn the customer-facing front end with their respective corporate identity and they are ready to go. The group's go-to-market strategy heavily incorporates public transit authorities, an approach influenced by its European roots. With their extensive wealth of well-built mass transit networks, these mainly state and municipal-owned companies play a role in urban, suburban and ex-urban mobility so crucial it would be difficult to displace them. Take for example the BVG authority operated by the German capital of Berlin, with whom VW Group already has signeda letter of intent. Three million people entrust their everyday transportation needs to its fine meshed web of buses, streetcars, subways and commuter trains to get back and forth in the greater metropolitan area every day. A BVG-branded robotaxi integrated into its service should see far faster adoption than were Volkswagen to compete alongside it. In a way, VW's partnership approach to the market is a natural fit. Carmakers have decades of experience working closely with regulators from various agencies, state and federal, to ensure their cars conform with traffic safety and environmental standards. In Silicon Valley, however, regulators are often viewed with suspicion—at best an irritant, at worst the enemy. The debacle around robotaxi developer Cruise proved that: following a fateful October 2023 accident in San Francisco, the tech startup deliberately withheld crucial information from crash investigators, shattering what trust was placed in them by the state of California only weeks earlier. When Cruise owner General Motors found out, it acted swiftly to sideline the CEO, but by then it was too late and the reputational damage was done. Cruise ceased all operations and GM pulled out of the autonomous ride-hailing race in December. With crosstown rival Ford already giving up even earlier, only Volkswagen and Hyundai, through its Motional subsidiary, still remain in contention from the legacy car industry. The rest are AI tech companies like Waymo, Tesla, Amazon subsidiary Zoox as well as their foreign equivalents like China's Baidu and Wayve in the UK. Of course, Meyer knows that the competition has a head start they won't hand over willingly. 'Waymo has an indisputable lead, that's clear, and I don't believe they're going to slow down in any way,' he told Fortune. Then there's Tesla, which is gearing up to launch its own pilot in Austin due to launch Sunday. While Meyer readily admits it's likely only a matter of time until Tesla can graduate to a full commercial robotaxi service, he believes all is not lost. For one, neither is present in Europe, a market known for being far more risk-averse towards unproven technologies and quick to regulate against threats towards public safety. Tesla's vaunted Full Self-Driving (FSD) feature, a software stack that will imbue its robotaxis with the requisite intelligence, hasn't yet been approved for use anywhere on the continent. In fact, it's not even available as an advanced driver assist. This offers enough of an opportunity for Volkswagen to greenlight the production of at least 10,000 robotaxi vehicles, potentially more. And even if Waymo and Tesla do retain their lead by the time VW is ready, Meyer believes communities will demand some degree of healthy competition among autonomous ride hailing providers in order to ensure an optimum service for a low cost. 'No one, not even in the United States, will be happy if there's a monopoly,' he said. 'We don't believe it will be a winner-takes-all market.' This story was originally featured on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data