Passengers don’t close the doors of autonomous taxis, and the company pays people just for that

The 1985 sci-fi hit Back to the Future promised flying cars and floating skateboards by 2015. A decade later, we have automatic vehicles that crash into poles and require a monthly subscription to adjust the seat.

Today, it may be necessary to use two cars to complete a trip: the robotaxi that drops you off at your destination and another, sent later, to close the door when you leave. Some robotaxi customers are so lazy that Waymo partnered with DoorDash to send drivers to close the doors of immobilized automated vehicles.

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A Reddit post in the r/DoorDash_Dasher subreddit shows a screenshot of an offer from DoorDash in downtown Atlanta to “door a Waymo.” The delivery person would receive US$6.25 (R$32) for accepting the task and another US$5 (R$26) upon completing it.

The partnership with DoorDash is Waymo’s latest effort to address an unautomated flaw in its robotaxi program: the doors require a human to close.

The company has already adopted a similar practice in Los Angeles, reported The Washington Post, using the Honk app, which hires towing companies to slam the door and close it.

Drivers on the app — nicknamed “Uber of the tow truck” — reported receiving up to US$24 (R$125) to close the door of a Waymo. Towing a car — as was necessary during a recent blackout in San Francisco, which left many Waymo vehicles stranded — can cost up to US$80 (R$414).

Waymo’s robotaxi expansion may not have created jobs for drivers, but it has created a microeconomy for app workers, who can spend up to an hour searching for cars, according to the Post.

At the time, Waymo spokeswoman Katherine Barna told the newspaper that problems with the doors “are not that common” and that the company is focused on “educating and guiding our passengers” about closing the door.

The Alphabet subsidiary already operates fully autonomous commercial vehicles in 10 US cities, including Miami and Austin, as well as Atlanta and Los Angeles, and plans to expand to Dallas, San Antonio and Orlando later this year.

In October of last year, DoorDash and Waymo announced a partnership to bring the autonomous delivery service to customers in metro Phoenix, where consumers will receive their DoorDash orders in Waymo’s autonomous vehicles.

“We’re excited to make everyday tasks simpler with Waymo Driver, offering the added peace of mind that comes with our safe and reliable technology,” said Nicole Gavel, head of business development and strategic partnerships at Waymo, in a statement announcing the partnership.

The partnership would advance “our vision of a multimodal autonomous future for local commerce,” added David Richter, vice president of business and corporate development at DoorDash.

Waymos affected on the streets

Waymo pointed to the San Francisco blackout as an environmental stress test that highlighted the limitations of autonomous vehicles, promising to make changes to the way cars operate in different emergency scenarios.

“Dealing with an event of this magnitude represented a unique challenge for autonomous technology,” said a company post.

When the blackout knocked out most of the city’s traffic lights, authorities had to guide traffic manually. Waymo vehicles have a design feature that sometimes prompts a confirmation check to determine what the car is experiencing on the road.

“Although we successfully crossed more than 7,000 intersections without light signals on Saturday, the blackout generated a concentrated spike in these requests. This created a backlog that, in some cases, led to delays in responses, contributing to congestion on already overloaded streets,” the statement said.

Autonomous vehicles appear to have become a target for vandalism recently. In 2024, a San Francisco man chased Cruise self-driving cars with an axe. Employees of General Motors’ short-haul robotaxi program reported to Fortune numerous cases of people puncturing tires and even dismantling parts of the vehicles while continuing their journey.

Most recently, in June of last year, protesters set fire to at least six Waymo vehicles in Los Angeles during anti-ICE protests.