- Multiple Waymo robotaxis have been staging at an idling station in San Francisco since July.
- When the EVs sense objects or cars getting too close, they honk.
- The honking has disrupted the peace in the San Francisco residential neighborhood, often at odd times.
Self-driving cars are supposed to be the pinnacle of innovation. They merge artificial intelligence, sensors, cameras and real-time data to make vehicles drive themselves, pushing the boundaries of what's possible on the road. But some of these cars have been causing a ruckus in an otherwise calm San Francisco neighborhood.
Recently, dozens of Waymo driverless taxis have been waking up residents in the middle of the night. Locals in the neighborhood said the cars honked at each other while attempting to park themselves at an idling station. The honking woke up people as late as 4 a.m., and some residents said it continued during the day.
"In the past two weeks I've been woken up more times overnight, than I have combined over the past 20 years," one resident told ABC News.
Waymo is Google parent company Alphabet's autonomous driving arm. It operates a fleet of Jaguar I-Pace electric robotaxis in San Fransisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles, with plans to enter Austin next.
When the cars have no riders, especially during off-peak hours or at night, they typically park and idle in designated areas. These are locations where the cars can wait for ride requests or have human attendants plug them in to recharge their batteries. In some cases, they may use parking lots, designated street parking spots or other approved locations where the I-Pace EVs can safely pull over.
One of these parking lots happens to be in a San Fransisco residential neighborhood. When other vehicles or objects come too close, the EVs are programmed to honk—they have expensive hardware on them like lidar, sensors and several cameras which could easily get damaged upon collision.
As several Waymos lined-up at the same time at this particular idling station, they caused a traffic jam, resulting in the EVs honking at each other. From the surrounding apartments and condos, it looked like they were struggling to find parking spots, or obstructing each others path as they steered towards a spot, flashing their blinkers and honking at each other. They all look confused.
"We recently introduced a useful feature to help avoid low speed collisions by honking if other cars get too close while reversing toward us," a Waymo spokesperson told InsideEVs. You can see in the Tweet above how the feature works. When the Waymo sensed a garbage truck reversing in its direction at a red light, it honked. "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 Waymo spokesperson added that the company has updated the software and the electric cars would "keep the noise down for our neighbors moving forward."
One resident said he regularly uses Waymo and is happy with the service. The company is the front-runner in the robotaxi business and is among the first companies to commercialize self-driving taxis. Currently, Waymos operate on mapped roads, but incidents like these highlight the steep learning curve and unpredictable challenges for tech companies as they plan to grow their robotaxi footprint.
