The Huge Waymo Recall That Wasn’t

I saw a few headlines — Waymo robotaxis were being recalled! 1,212 of them! Apparently, at low speeds, they were running into trouble with gates and chains and such. Not life threatening, but not great. But a 1,212 vehicle recall?!

Ah, they did it again. We normally see this with Tesla, but it’s again the case with Waymo — all that was required was a software update. They vehicles didn’t need to go back to the shop and have a hardware change. They just needed an over-the-air software update.

So, really, it’s no big deal. Yes, it’s not perfect execution if Waymos were bumping into gates for some reason, but it’s not the biggest problem. And the fact that it’s so easy to fix almost makes it not newsworthy — well, if it wasn’t such good clickbait.

That’s basically the story, but note also that this doesn’t mean Waymo has 1,212 vehicles on the road. This only applied to vehicles using the fifth-generation automated driving system software. Waymo has more than 1,500 vehicles in service in total — operating in San Francisco and Los Angeles in California; Phoenix, Arizona; and Austin, Texas.

As reported recently, Waymo robotaxis appear to be much safer, better driver than humans.

“Waymo provides more than 250,000 paid trips every week in some of the most challenging driving environments in the U.S.,” the company added this week.

Indeed. So, despite the hoopla, and 16 self-reported bumps into barriers of various sorts at low speeds (which, admittedly, is weird), the story with Waymo remains the same and the “recall” was much ado about nothing.