[dwroberts]

Think it is a much bigger deal than you’re making out, because we don’t have figures on how often the cars need assistance.

We assume it’s just occasionally but we don’t actually know that. They could be requesting assistance constantly and Waymo would have an incentive to keep that hush-hush. Certainly would not be the first time a big SV company has faked it until they technically worked.

[scarmig]

We do know it's not all cars constantly, though. The PGE outage in San Francisco proved it, as anytime a Waymo came across a unpowered traffic light, it was configured to ask for assistance. This led to disaster, as there weren't close to enough humans to provide guidance to all the Waymos.

[dwroberts]

This is not proof of anything, it’s just an explanation that Waymo provided. We have no way of validating any part of that is true.

The way the cars behaved during the power outage could have been the result of anything - even eg. requiring full remote control and losing connectivity to a local facility