Waymo Madness in SF! Why robotaxis clogged the streets | E2227

Quick Overview

Waymo robotaxis clogged San Francisco intersections, blocking traffic in multiple lanes after a widespread power outage that began around 1 p.m. on Saturday, demonstrating a critical edge case for autonomous vehicles when traffic lights fail and connectivity may be compromised.

Key Points: A power outage in San Francisco around 1 p.m. on Saturday affected about 130,000 customers, causing Waymo self-driving cars to stop in intersections and block traffic. Multiple Waymos were observed stopped in one intersection across three different lanes, leading to traffic backup and honking, which the hosts deemed a "catastrophe" and not what Waymo promised the world. The hosts speculated the failure was due to a combination of traffic light loss and potential connectivity issues, noting that remote drivers might not have been able to intervene if connectivity was down. A competitor noted that "Tesla robotaxis were unaffected by the SF power outage," highlighting a potential difference between Waymo's map-based, heuristics-based system and Tesla's end-to-end models. Jason Calacanis predicted that connectivity, like Starlink, will become standard in all cars, citing Tesla's recent patent filing for integrating connectivity into every vehicle. The discussion shifted to the massive wealth creation potential in ride-sharing as prices drop from $2-$3 per mile to $0.50-$1 per mile, predicting that 50% of rides will be done by ride-sharing within 10 to 20 years. The hosts briefly covered Google acquiring Intersect for $4.75 billion to secure compute power and predicted Google might buy Uber to compete with Tesla's integrated ecosystem.

Context: The discussion centers on a specific incident in San Francisco where a major power outage on a Saturday caused Waymo autonomous vehicles to become immobilized and block traffic, illustrating real-world limitations of current self-driving technology when infrastructure fails. Hosts Jason Calacanis and Alex Wilhelm analyze this event in the context of the broader competition between autonomous vehicle providers, specifically comparing Waymo's performance against Tesla during the emergency, and then transition to discussing broader industry trends like connectivity integration and the future market size of ride-sharing.