A Waymo car caught fire in San Francisco's Chinatown after a crowd surrounded it, scrawled graffiti, smashed windows and then threw fireworks into the driverless vehicle in the middle of a busy street Saturday night.
No one was in the car and no injuries were reported, police and company officials said.
The San Francisco Fire Department was called to the scene around 9 p.m. in the 700 block of Jackson Street, authorities said. Chinatown was bustling as people celebrated the Lunar New Year.
Published videos Software engineer Michael Vandi's social media shows someone using a skateboard to smash the windows of the white Jaguar while sensors on the car's roof continued to spin. Another shot shows someone writing on the side of the car. The car was eventually engulfed in flames as onlookers gathered to record the scene with their phones.
The robotaxi was one of hundreds the company fleets in San Francisco, said Waymo spokesperson Sandy Karp. “We are working closely with local security officials to respond to the situation.”
The motive for the attack is unclear and police say the fire is under investigation.
Tensions over self-driving cars have risen since a driverless Cruise car owned by General Motors ran over a woman in downtown San Francisco and pinned her underneath last fall, sending her to the hospital with serious injuries.
The incident ultimately forced Cruise to suspend operations, while its Google-owned competitor Waymo has moved forward with its expansion, recently arriving in Los Angeles to wary officials and worried taxi and truck drivers. A limited number of Waymo self-driving vehicles are on the streets of Los Angeles as the company offers test rides by invitation.
But Waymo has applied to the California Public Utilities Commission for a license to expand its fleet and be fully operational in Los Angeles.
A self-driving Waymo vehicle was vandalized and set on fire in downtown San Francisco on Saturday night.
(Séraphine Hossenlopp/San Francisco Fire Department Media)
Concerned that robotaxis could be dangerous, Mayor Karen Bass asked regulators in November to increase their scrutiny and said the city should have a say in how they are regulated.
At the time, he said one of Waymo's self-driving cars operating in Los Angeles had initially failed to stop for a traffic officer at Beaudry Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard on Aug. 3, 2023. The officer had been flagging traffic on east and west direction that would come. until stopping.
No injuries were reported.
Since then, union and local officials have been increasing pressure on the company. Earlier this month, the head of the city's firefighters union appeared with other local officials on the steps of City Hall endorsing legislation introduced by California State Sen. Dave Cortese (D-San Jose) that would give local officials more control of autonomous vehicles.
Cortese said he is concerned not only about the vehicles' ability to comply with local laws but also about the threat they pose to workers.
“If we don't learn to act quickly, with our laws and in terms of protecting jobs with those laws, we're going to end up with the biggest depression that I think this country has ever seen,” he said during the conference. .
