Waymo Hiccup — Paying People $20 To Close Doors — To Get A Real Fix

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With a new technology comes issues people haven’t adequately foreseen and prepared for. I’ve seen readers highlight potential problems with robotaxis like customers needing help with their luggage, but I don’t recall seeing anyone bring this one up: passengers not closing the door properly and then walking away.

Apparently, Waymo has a bit of a problem with this. And how does the AI get the door closed then? It can’t. As a result, Waymo has been paying people to go and close robotaxi doors. But how does that work?

Apparently, there’s a fairly new app called Honk that’s a bit like Uber for towing companies, and that’s how Waymo often goes about getting the doors closed — and it’s costing the company $20 or more per car.

Towing company owner Cesar Marenco talked with the Washington Post about this. He says that he gets about three jobs a week from Waymo. Sometimes he has to tow a Waymo to a hailing station, while other times he is implementing simple fixes, like closing doors.

“There’s always going to be human error when someone’s riding in a vehicle and there’s no one to tell them to close the door or put their seat belt on,” Marenco told the Washington Post. However…

Waymo does have a fix in order. Future models the company uses for its robotaxi service will have self-closing doors. Presumably, those would be the coming Zeekr — or, Ojai — models, especially since it was mentioned these would be minivan-like doors and the Zeekr model has those whereas the Hyundai IONIQ 5 does not.

That said, one would think that Waymo would be making its doors automatic on all of its new vehicles rather than continuing to run into this problem. Or perhaps it could just remind passengers to close the doors fully?

As noted at the top, with a new technology comes issues people haven’t adequately foreseen and prepared for. Social media was great when it was funny cat videos and other weird and beautiful things that made us laugh and smile, but then it turned into hate, division, bullying, and mass misinformation. AI is supposed to solve all kinds of problems, but it’s also being used for abuse and it’s sending out all kinds of misinformation as well. Having some customers not close their doors fully isn’t the biggest hiccup Waymo has faced or will face, but it also doesn’t help the company’s march toward profitability.