Reports of a mass stranding of Cruise robotaxis in the center of San Francisco a week or so ago have triggered a lot of speculation by the media corps. The upshot is that these VRE (vehicle retrieval events) are happening fairly regularly at the moment, as the company struggles to keep the autonomous car fleet working properly. Jokes litter the Twitterverse about striking robots and unionised workers, but the fact of the matter is this stuff is not working very well. Rather like Tesla’s autonomous driving systems actually. It can’t be good when flagship tech fails in such a dramatic way in the center of town. Four Chevy Bolt robotaxi’s apparently just stopped working at an intersection for no apparent reason, causing traffic jams and blushes.
To add to a night of technical oddities there are three Cruise vehicles, all (literally) driverless, stuck at and partially blocking the corner of Geary and Mason 😅 pic.twitter.com/ypBze8nrnW
— Smerity (@Smerity) June 21, 2022
Apparently it could be a hardware or software problem. Which is helpful. We’re pretty sure it’s not a driver problem. Sheesh!