At first glance, it is easy to understand why people like ARK investment's Cathy Wood and Tesla Elon Musk are so hell-bent on the novel idea of robotaxis.
Companies like Google-backed (GOOGL) Waymo and General Motors-backed (GM) Cruise have offered buyers a glimpse of a future that would have only been a reality in TV and movies: a future in which cars drive, pick up passengers and get them from place to place without the need for a human driver.
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Unfortunately, we live in the year 2024, not the future. Many cars on the roads of American cities are still driven by humans who cause accidents, and sometimes, the roads they drive on are less than ideal for comfortable and effortless driving.
Though the safety record of robotaxi technology is being scrutinized by residents of the cities they operate in and the federal government, a new problem has arisen in San Francisco, to the delight of local residents.
Waymo's "robotaxi depot" blunder
Residents of San Francisco's South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood have been losing sleep because Waymo's robotaxis have been making way too much noise in the middle of the night in a large parking lot in the neighborhood.
Local NBC affiliate NBC Bay Area reports that for a few weeks, residents in high-rise residential buildings near the parking lot have been hearing the autonomous robotaxis make honking noises throughout the night.
Videos provided by residents to the affiliate network show Waymo's signature white Jaguars filing into the parking lot and attempting to back into parking spaces spots, which seems to trigger honking from other stationary Waymo vehicles parked nearby.
Waymo uses the parking lot as a makeshift "autonomous taxi depot," where cars without passengers can rest between rides.
SoMa resident Christopher Cherry lives next door and works a work-from-home job. He told the NBC affiliate that the noise intensified as more vehicles used the lot.
"We started out with a couple of honks here and there, and then as more and more cars started to arrive, the situation got worse," Cherry told NBC Bay Area.
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He said that he hears honking noises at different intensities every day. Unfortunately, the most intense honking occurs at times when he and other neighborhood residents should be fast asleep.
"It's very distracting during the work day, but most importantly, it wakes you up at four in the morning."
Another SoMa resident, software engineer Sophia Tung, said in a July 29 Threads post that "the boop boop boop of waymos backing up and pulling in/out" has affected her so much that she "literally heard it in [her] dreams."
Tung has been documenting activity in the Waymo-occupied parking lot on her YouTube channel, which also features a 24-hour livestream of the parking lot set to lo-fi music.
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A quick fix
In a recent statement to The Verge, Waymo spokesperson Chris Bonelli explained that robotaxis' honking noises were due to a crash prevention feature it embedded in its cars.
"We recently introduced a useful feature to help avoid low speed collisions by honking if other cars get too close while reversing toward us," Bonelli said.
"It has been working great in the city, but we didn’t quite anticipate it would happen so often in our own parking lots."
The spokesperson said that Waymo has updated the software, which "should keep the noise down for our neighbors moving forward."
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