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A Waymo autonomous vehicle navigates through the intersection of North Main and Evergreen streets in October. Passenger service resumed Thursday after a five-month shutdown.<\/p>\n
Sam Owens\/San Antonio Express-News<\/p>\n
A Waymo robotaxi travels on the East Side of San Antonio in October. Passenger service resumed Thursday after a five-month shutdown.<\/p>\n
Sam Owens\/San Antonio Express-News<\/p>\n
Waymo<\/a> self-driving robotaxis<\/a> restarted passenger service in San Antonio on Thursday, about five months after\u00a0it was shut down<\/a> following several incidents of the cars getting caught in floodwaters.\u00a0<\/p>\n Service was to resume at 11 a.m.\u00a0\u2014 but only for those who already had access on the Waymo app before the April shutdown.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The California-based company said that during the pause, it continued testing and made upgrades to help the cars navigate water-covered roads.\u00a0<\/p>\n Robert Chen, Waymo\u2019s lead on helping the robotaxis deal with weather, said the company updated its\u00a0operations, controls, data and software. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s really changed in the past five months is the onboard software,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n San Antonio Express News Logo<\/p>\n Make us a Preferred Source on Google to see more of us when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n RELATED: Police records show how Waymo robotaxis struggled on San Antonio streets<\/a><\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The cars are now better equipped to deal with water on the road and potentially avoid situations like what they experienced during heavy storms across San Antonio in April, according to the company.<\/p>\n Three Waymos got caught in high water at separate sites on April 4 and another drove into floodwaters on an Interstate 35 frontage road and was swept away on April 20. Nobody was injured in the incidents. \u00a0<\/p>\n Chen said his team\u2019s upgrades to the company\u2019s driving system that\u2019s powered by artificial intelligence, known as the\u00a0Waymo Driver<\/a>, have it better prepared for such unpredictable weather.<\/p>\n \u201cYou want to be able to detect (standing water or flooding) and have an appropriate response to it \u2014 which is stopping beforehand and turning around and not driving through if it\u2019s if it\u2019s too deep,\u201d he said. \u201cSo that\u2019s really been the big improvement that has been made, in addition to many other improvements on the operational intelligence side.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n READ MORE: Austin logs 8 robotaxi crashes as Tesla, Waymo grow Texas fleets<\/a><\/p>\n The April 20 incident, he said, revealed a weakness in how the cars detect and respond to flooding.\u00a0<\/p>\n The system \u201cwasn\u2019t as \u2026 comprehensive or (able to deal with) as many scenarios and situations as we were intending,” he said. His team found that the \u2018software on its own was not able to fully mitigate\u2019 the conditions the car was encountering.\u00a0<\/p>\n In addition to halting service in San Antonio after the car was swept away, Waymo issued a software recall for its entire U.S. fleet of 3,800 vehicles. And in May, the company briefly shut down passenger service in its other Texas markets\u00a0\u2014 Austin, Dallas and Houston\u00a0\u2014 as well as in Atlanta and Nashville, because of impending severe weather.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted to make sure that we actually took the time to look at it, understand it more fully, and then basically go through our entire development and validation process,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd that process, especially when there\u2019s software improvements that are part of it, does take time.\u201d<\/p>\n READ NEXT: Waymo robotaxi batteries to get second life in San Antonio grid storage projects<\/a><\/p>\n Waymo said that through March, it had driven 220.6 million rider-only miles<\/a> without a human driver. Company statistics say the automated driver system is more than 10 times safer than human drivers.\u00a0<\/p>\n San Antonio\u2019s resumed service will have dozens of the company\u2019s white Jaguar I-Paces driving across a 60-mile service area roughly bounded by Interstate 10 on the south and west and Loop 410 to the north and east. The area includes downtown, several neighborhoods, the Arena District and San Antonio International Airport.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cRiders will be notified by push notification from their Waymo app,\u201d Waymo spokesman Chris Bonelli said. \u201cWe will continually welcome people from the remaining\u00a0waitlist over the coming weeks before opening to anyone in the city later this year.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n