May 28, 2026 - Waymo Hits Some Bumps

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for May 28, 2026, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry. 

Waymo is generally considered to be the global leader in the development of automated robotaxis. The Alphabet-owned company began as the Google Self-Driving Car project in 2009 and is currently operating commercial robotaxis services with more than 2,500 vehicles across at least 10 U.S. cities and is testing in at least a dozen more in the U.S., as well as London, England and Tokyo, Japan. Waymo has recently been in the final stages of validating several new products, including its V6 Driver hardware system and the new Zeekr-built Ojai robotaxi vehicle. The Ojai and V6 Driver have been expected to be introduced into the commercial service in the second half of 2026. 

Despite the scaling of Waymo across the U.S. and globally, as it grows, the company has been facing new and ongoing technical challenges that have actually forced it to pull back. Since at least the fall of 2025, Waymo vehicles have been spotted not obeying the rules about not passing school buses when their lights and stop signs are deployed. There has been at least one recall for a software update, but reports indicate it's still a problem. In Atlanta, empty Waymos have been clogging neighborhood cul-de-sacs in a seeming repeat of problems the company first encountered in San Francisco several years ago. 

Waymos have also been found speeding through construction zones and driving into deep water following heavy storms, where there is the potential for them to be stranded. As a result, Waymo has notified the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that it is conducting some software recalls to try to address these issues. This includes updating maps and reducing the operational design domain for the vehicles. For example, Waymo has suspended all highway driving operations in cities across the U.S. until these issues are resolved. 

To be fair, most of what we're hearing are things that human drivers do every day. However, the whole point of automation is to be able to avoid these kinds of mistakes that get people into trouble. If the expensive technology can't improve upon human foibles, we haven't really made progress. All of this should be part of setting national standards for the performance of automated driving systems before we widely deploy any of these systems. 

Thanks for listening.