Cruise, Waymo reveal number of driverless cars on S.F. streets
Cruise and Waymo publicly disclosed on Monday the number of driverless taxis they operate in San Francisco ahead of a pivotal decision by state regulators on whether to allow the companies to charge for driverless rides at all hours without restrictions.
That disclosure emerged during a California Public Utilities Commission hearing that essentially served as the closing arguments between the robotaxi companies vying to fully commercialize in San Francisco and city officials who want to pump the brakes on their expansion.
Cruise officials told state commissioners that the company operates about 300 vehicles at night and 100 during the day in San Francisco; Waymo officials said the company has a fleet of 250 robotaxis in service.
The companies didn’t specify how they would expand operations if given the final green light by state regulators, though both said they’d do so incrementally.
During a recent General Motors earnings call, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt was asked how many robotaxis it would take for Cruise to “have a disruptive service similar to Uber.”
“There’s over 10,000 human ride-hail drivers in San Francisco, potentially much more than that depending on how you count,” Vogt said in response to the hypothetical question. “Those drivers, of course, aren’t working 20 hours a day like a robotaxi could. So it doesn’t take a very high number to generate significant revenue in a city like San Francisco, but certainly there’s capacity to absorb several thousand per city at a minimum.”
The CPUC, which regulates robotaxis in the city along with the state Department of Motor Vehicles, has gradually lifted restrictions in recent years over how, where and when the companies can deploy their driverless cars. Both companies currently can operate their autonomous vehicles 24 hours a day, but can only charge for rides at night.
The commission has twice delayed the vote to remove that final restriction amid opposition from city officials who say the companies’ expansion has coincided with a sharp rise in robotaxis’ disruption to emergency responders, transit and city traffic.
Full commercialization, officials say, would further increase the frequency of disruptive incidents. Fire officials told state regulators they’ve tracked 55 incidents so far this year — including five over the past weekend — where robotaxis interfered with emergency responders.
Representatives for Alphabet-backed Waymo and General Motorsbacked Cruise defended their vehicles’ safety records. In many cases, they said, their robotaxis stall because they deem it the safest action to take at the time. Cruise and Waymo officials said their technology is continuously improving and their driverless vehicles are safer than human-driven cars.
At the request of the commission, the companies presented data on how often their vehicles come to the unplanned stops that have disrupted firefighters, transit and traffic. The figures they reported didn’t allow for direct comparisons.
Cruise, for instance, tallied 177 “unexpected vehicle retrieval events” — in which company personnel had to physically retrieve stalled robotaxis — between Jan. 1 and July 18. The company logged 2.1 million of its 3 million driverless miles in San Francisco during this period. Twenty-six of these incidents happened when a passenger was inside the vehicle.
“This commission granted Cruise approval for deployment over one year ago and since that time, the safety record of our operations is borne out in the data we have shared with you,” said Prashanthi Raman, Cruise’s vice president of global government affairs. “Cruise AVs have now driven over 3 million miles safely, the vast majority of which go unnoticed.”
Waymo reported 58 instances between Jan. 1 and June 30 in which company personnel or first responders retrieved one of its stalled robotaxis while carrying a passenger inside.
Both companies said the rate of unplanned stops per mile went down in June, including by 80% for Waymo robotaxis, as their technology on how the AVs react to real-life street conditions improves.
“Because our system is continuously learning, these circumstances occur less and less,” said David Margines, group product manager at Waymo. “In fact, we are confident that in most of these cases, using our latest software, the vehicle would either not have to stop at all, be able to get moving again with remote assistance, or be able to get moving again fully autonomously.”
The incident data gathered by San Francisco officials told a different story.
San Francisco officials have logged about 600 disruptive incidents by autonomous vehicles since spring 2022, including 120 incidents in June, alone. Officials believe that figure accounts for a fraction of all incidents because the companies aren’t required to report such data to state regulators.
Julia Friedlander, senior manager of automated driving policy at the Municipal Transportation Agency, said the data Cruise and Waymo presented didn’t capture the full extent of their disruption.
“What we have seen is that things are not getting better,” Friedlander said.
Cruise and Waymo officials said they work fast to retrieve their stalled vehicles. Cruise said its retrievals average 14 minutes. Waymo said its retrievals average 10 minutes.
Fire officials told the commission that those response times aren’t sufficient during emergencies, where a one-minute difference could mean battling a fire twice the size.
“It is not the responsibility of my people to get in one of your (driverless) vehicles and take it over,” fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson said. “It is the responsibility of the autonomous vehicle companies to not have them impact us in the first place.”
Fire officials suggested the companies use geofencing to prevent autonomous vehicles from entering active emergency scenes. In an ideal situation, the robotaxis would respond to commands from first responders “immediately.”
Though both sides said communications between the AV companies and city agencies have improved in recent months, Nicholson was skeptical that would remain the case if state regulators lifted Cruise and Waymo’s remaining restrictions.
“Giving full authorization for autonomous vehicle companies to expand really gives them no reason to meet us and work with us on what our operations require,” Nicholson said.