- As more companies try their hand at the autonomous taxi game, an industry veteran is discovering an interesting issue.
- Waymo is paying people to close robotaxi doors so that they can get back on the road.
- If a door is not closed all the way, Waymo’s robotaxis will not move, which could impede traffic.
Multiple companies are touting a future filled with autonomous vehicles that make pick-ups and drop-offs pretty much everywhere in the world. But until that happens, Waymo, the leader among robotaxi companies, has to deal with an old-school problem that few probably imagined would need fixing: doors that aren’t closed properly.
The Alphabet-owned autonomous vehicle ride-sharing operator uses Jaguar I-Pace EVs exclusively for public rides, which have traditional doors that need to be closed by a human being. No fancy motors or actuators. And for safety reasons, a Waymo robotaxi will not move an inch if one of its doors isn’t closed all the way.
That’s not ideal, especially in situations like the one that happened recently in San Francisco. A huge power outage took out traffic lights, forcing Waymo robotaxis to call back home for assistance while sitting in intersections. Some riders understandably got fed up and ended their rides early, leaving the door partly closed as they walked away.
The solution? Pay other people to rescue Waymos by closing their doors. The company pays gig workers in Los Angeles between $20 and $24 to rescue a driverless taxi by closing a door. According to The Washington Post, the robotaxi operator asks for help through a smartphone app called Honk, which is typically used by towing companies.
Cesar Marenco, the owner of a towing company in Inglewood, California, was interviewed by the Washington Post. He said that he recently freed a robotaxi by removing a seat belt caught in its rear door, and that he’s now a regular Waymo door-closer. “There’s always going to be human errors when someone’s riding in a vehicle and there’s no one to tell them to close the door, or put their seat belt right,” Marenco said, adding that he now completes up to three jobs per week for Waymo.
Cars with automatically closing doors are the solution for this decades-old problem, but it will be a while before Waymo will retire its aging fleet of Jaguar I-Pace EVs. The company is currently testing the Hyundai Ioniq 5 electric crossover, which is a readily available EV in the United States, but it doesn’t have automatic closing doors. At the same time, the Alphabet-owned entity is looking into deploying custom-made robotaxis developed with China’s Zeekr, which have minivan-like automatic doors. Amazon’s Zoox autonomous pod, which is ferrying passengers in Las Vegas and San Francisco, also has electrically powered doors.
