Waymo Halts Service in Downtown Los Angeles After Its Taxis Are Set on Fire

nytimes.com

18 points·tantalor··6 comments

I was wondering why they didn't do this sooner.

I saw 3 waymos burning on the news and pulled up the app and it would still let me book one right to middle of the protest.

They seem to have dropped the ball here and makes me wonder what their on call and active incident response policy is.

It isn't hard to imagine politicians grandstanding no matter what Waymo does. If they stop service, and save several hundred thousand dollars in property damage, surely some people will be claiming that Waymo is taking sides, and limiting people's freedom to protest. Or that Waymo is like a utility, and they need to provide service no matter what. What if someone was fleeing riot violence, and they couldn't get a Waymo ride out of the area? Waymo gets a lot more cover if they let a few cars burn first.

I don’t think anyone will blame waymo from staying away from this.

Or they are insured, including against loss revenue. If your insurance payout included estimated revenue assuming there weren't riots, then it should be a net positive to operate and just let them burn until they hit their payout cap and then recall them.

As someone that worked half a decade in self-driving, I doubt this is a revenue positive, or even neutral, situation with insurance.

We were insured (at the competitor where I worked) for the cost of the vehicle including lidars etc but there’s an enormous amount of time and employee salary to calibrate each vehicle precisely, in addition to provisioning, backend server setup, etc. etc. Bringing a replacement vehicle online, even while heavily automated, is not free.

No paywall articles:

https://electrek.co/2025/06/09/several-waymo-self-driving-i-...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/06/09/waymo-...

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