Waymo robotaxi Having Difficulties On Roundabouts

Several companies are working on autonomous taxis. Waymo is also one of them. But a video of one of the vehicles shows that there are still problems. It appears that something has lost its orientation.

Complicated development of autonomous vehicles

Developing self-driving cars is a complicated undertaking. This is clear from the fact that several companies have been working on reliably autonomous robotaxis for ages. Four years ago, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that they wanted to have a number of vehicles on the roads by the end of 2020. As is well known, nothing came of it.

The Tesla robotaxi was only presented on October 10th of this year, which immediately resulted in the company being sued. Competitor Waymo, on the other hand, already has a number of robotaxis in use in cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and Phoenix. However, there are still problems here, as a video on X now shows.

Involuntary carousel ride

One of the vehicles can be seen making its rounds seemingly endlessly in a roundabout. It looks like the car can’t decide on one of the exits or can’t find any of them. However, it is not known exactly which technical problem is behind the strange driving behavior. Upon request from TechCrunch However, operator Waymo announced that they had already carried out a software update on the robotaxis that fixed the problem.

More incidents

Strange incidents have occurred with Waymo’s autonomous vehicles in the past. For example, residents complained about vehicles parked in a parking space honking all night long. Robotaxis have also had their problems in the past with fire engines in use. For example, one of the cars was parked behind a fire engine, which prevented the firefighters from extending the ladders.

Competition gives up

Just a few days ago, Waymo’s competitor Cruise completely stopped developing its autonomous taxis. The move was justified by increasing competition in the robotaxis business. Since taking over Cruise in 2016, automaker GM has invested around $10 billion in the company.