The way forward for transportation hit a pace bump over the weekend exterior San Francisco’s Portola Music Competition, the place at the least two of Google’s autonomous Waymo automobiles appeared to malfunction and block visitors.
The 2-day digital music competition returned to Pier 80 on Saturday, September twenty eighth with a lineup that includes RÜFÜS DU SOL, Gesaffelstein and Justice, amongst others. Many festivalgoers on Sunday evening reported surprising delays because of quite a lot of stalled Waymo automobiles heading westbound on Cesar Chavez Avenue.
“The shuttle line was completely backed up and we had to exit the shuttle,” one annoyed attendee mentioned in a submit on X.
@PortolaFestival @Waymo #BanWaymo. On the best way out of the competition a whole line of visitors turning north on Caesar Chavez was blocked by two waymo automobiles that had been stalled. the shuttle line was utterly backed up and we needed to exit the shuttle. pic.twitter.com/0M33NbJZ6o
— Alex Walker (@steeleranger1) September 29, 2024
One shuttle was caught for over half-hour, one other passenger mentioned.
An irate attendee has now urged Portola’s organizers, Goldenvoice, to ban Waymo from the competition’s grounds in a thread created on the r/PortolaFestival subreddit. There, an individual who claims to have been a passenger in one of many immobilized Waymo automobiles responded.
“I was in one of THE Waymo’s that f***ed up traffic on one of the side streets,” the passenger wrote. “We were doing everything that we could to get it to move, but support wouldn’t do anything.”
On our approach out of @PortolaFestival we bought mega caught behind two confused @Waymo automobiles. Thanks guys, nice work letting them unfastened when there’s a significant music competition happening within the metropolis ❤️ pic.twitter.com/39TBSQuVh5
— Nima (@heythereitsnima) September 29, 2024
Waymo, which is taken into account the world’s preeminent autonomous car firm, makes use of a mix of AI, lidar and machine studying to navigate metropolis streets. Regardless of being a market chief, the corporate faces ongoing challenges in expertise refinement and regulatory hurdles because it goals to scale its operations.
Alphabet, Google’s father or mother firm, invested $5 billion in Waymo in July. Morgan Stanley analysts in 2021 valued the self-driving unit at $175 billion however finally slashed that determine right down to $105 billion. The Monetary Instances on the time reported the valuation was truly nearer to $30 billion.
Waymo has not but publicly commented on the Portola Music Competition ordeal on the time of this writing.
