The future of transportation hit a roadblock over the weekend outside San Francisco's Portola Music Festival, where at least two of Google's Waymo self-driving vehicles appeared to malfunction and blocked traffic.
The two-day electronic music festival returned to Pier 80 on Saturday, September 28 with a lineup that includes RÜFÜS DU SOL, Gesaffelstein and Justice, among others. Many attendees leaving Portola on Sunday night reported unexpected traffic delays due to several stopped Waymo cars heading west on Cesar Chavez Street.
“The ferry line was completely jammed and we had to get off the ferry,” said one frustrated attendee in a post on X.
A ferry was stuck for more than 30 minutes, another passenger saying.
A furious attendee has urged Portola organizers Goldenvoice to ban Waymo from the festival grounds in a thread created in the r/PortolaFestival subreddit. There, a person responded who claims to have been a passenger in one of the immobilized Waymo cars.
“I was on one of THE Waymo's that messed up traffic on one of the side streets,” the passenger wrote. “We were doing everything we could to get him moving, but the support was of no use.”
Waymo, considered one of the world's largest autonomous vehicle companies, uses a combination of artificial intelligence, lidar and machine learning to navigate city streets. Despite being a market leader, the company faces continuous challenges in refining technology and regulatory obstacles as it intends to expand its operations.
Alphabet, Google's parent company, invested $5 billion in Waymo in July. In 2021, analysts at Morgan Stanley valued the autonomous driving unit at $175 billion, but ultimately reduced that figure to $105 billion. He Financial times At the time it was reported, the valuation was actually closer to $30 billion.
Waymo has yet to publicly comment on the Portola Music Festival ordeal as of this writing.
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