The future of transportation hit a speed bump over the weekend outside San Francisco’s Portola Music Festival, where at least two of Google’s autonomous Waymo vehicles appeared to malfunction and block traffic.
The two-day electronic music festival returned to Pier 80 on Saturday, September 28th with a lineup featuring RÜFÜS DU SOL, Gesaffelstein and Justice, among others. Many festivalgoers on Sunday night reported unexpected delays due to a number of stalled Waymo cars heading westbound on Cesar Chavez Street.
“The shuttle line was completely backed up and we had to exit the shuttle,” one frustrated attendee said in a post on X.
@PortolaFestival @Waymo #BanWaymo. On the way out of the festival an entire line of traffic turning north on Caesar Chavez was blocked by two waymo vehicles that were stalled. the shuttle line was completely backed up and we had to exit the shuttle. pic.twitter.com/0M33NbJZ6o
— Alex Walker (@steeleranger1) September 29, 2024
One shuttle was stuck for over 30 minutes, another passenger said.
An irate attendee has now urged Portola’s organizers, Goldenvoice, to ban Waymo from the festival’s grounds in a thread created on the r/PortolaFestival subreddit. There, a person who claims to have been a passenger in one of the immobilized Waymo cars 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 way out of @PortolaFestival we got mega stuck behind two confused @Waymo cars. Thanks guys, great work letting them loose when there’s a major music festival going on in the city ❤️ pic.twitter.com/39TBSQuVh5
— Nima (@heythereitsnima) September 29, 2024
Waymo, which is considered the world’s preeminent autonomous vehicle company, uses a combination of AI, lidar and machine learning to navigate city streets. Despite being a market leader, the company faces ongoing challenges in technology refinement and regulatory hurdles as it aims to scale its operations.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, invested $5 billion in Waymo in July. Morgan Stanley analysts in 2021 valued the self-driving unit at $175 billion but ultimately slashed that figure down to $105 billion. The Financial Times at the time reported the valuation was actually closer to $30 billion.
Waymo has not yet publicly commented on the Portola Music Festival ordeal at the time of this writing.
