In comments submitted to the state's Public Utilities Commission on Tuesday, Tesla referred to the December 2025 San Francisco power outage that left some Waymo vehicles stranded in traffic. Waymo later said the blackout caused a spike in requests from its robotaxis to the company's remote assistance (RA) team, who assist the company's robotaxis when they get into unusual situations. The surge in requests ultimately overwhelmed the system, Waymo said.
Starting today, anyone on the company's waitlist of approximately 10,000 people can hail one of its robotaxis for trips within a 60-square-mile service area that includes popular neighborhoods like the Design District and Wynwood, Brickell, and Coral Gables - but not popular tourist destinations like South Beach. The vehicles also will initially avoid highways and stick to local roads, with plans to expand to faster-speed roads later this year.
"It always felt like it was three years out," he said of autonomous driving. "And then every year it shifted by a year. So we wanted to have self-driving cars everywhere in 2020 at Zoox. And then it was 2021 and so forth." Von der Ohe left Zoox in 2018. Instead of fixating on robotaxis, von der Ohe wanted to stay in mobility but work on something that could be faster to bring to market
