If you’ve been following news coverage of recent anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles, you may have heard about protestors burning Waymo vehicles. But unless you frequent the select few cities where they’ve been rolled out so far, you’re likely unfamiliar with the company. Here’s a rundown of what exactly those vehicles are, and why controversy surrounds them.

What Is a Waymo?

Waymo is the rebrand of Google’s self-driving car project. The company bills its cars and its self-driving software as “The World’s Most Experienced Driver.” According to their website, they stand head and shoulders above other “self-driving” companies because these other companies only offer “driver assist technology which still requires a human driver behind the wheel,” as its competitors still require a human being behind the wheel “paying full attention and ready to take over whenever the car encounters a situation it can’t handle.”

Waymo, on the other hand, equips its vehicles with autonomous technology that is always in control from pickup to destination. The company brags that their “passengers don’t even need to know how to drive. They can sit in the back seat, relax, and enjoy the ride with the Waymo Driver getting them to their destination safely.”

Waymo is being rolled out across the country as a rideshare option. As they become more widespread, the company wants to compete with the likes of Uber and Lyft.

Why Is Waymo Controversial?

RINGO CHIU/GETTY IMAGES

When you order a Waymo, a driverless vehicle greets you. You aren’t supposed to touch the steering wheel at all. Instead, you just sit back and let the software piloting the car do all the work that a chauffeur, taxi driver, or Uber or Lyft driver would ordinarily do. Unsurprisingly, many people dislike this new technology, and there are several key concerns surrounding it.

Safety concerns

One of the primary concerns surrounding self-driving cars is safety. There have been many reports of Waymo crashes already. In fact, according to CNN, Waymo had to recall nearly 700 of its vehicles just last year to upgrade its software so that they wouldn’t crash into telephone poles. The accident that sparked this particular recall happened despite the vehicle’s plethora of cameras and sensors.

Privacy concerns

Another safety concern is the cameras and sensors the car is equipped with. NBC reports that there has been backlash surrounding “Waymo’s collection of street data through its cameras and sensors.” In response to calls from California lawmakers asking for more data from the company—ostensibly to evaluate its safety—the company said “it reports more on-road data than most other vehicles operating today.”

Pushing out taxis and Ubers

There are also widespread concerns that Waymo will do to Uber and Lyft what those companies did to the taxi industry: push them out. In a deep dive into the effects of rideshare companies on the taxi industry, the LAist cited Yellow Cab’s 2016 bankruptcy in San Francisco, saying, “Yellow Cab had around 500 medallions, which the city sold for $250,000 apiece. The company ended up selling for around $810,000, a little more than the sticker price for just three medallions.”

If this trend repeats itself with driverless vehicles, many fear a wave of job losses and the impact that would have. Taking human drivers out of the equation entirely means eliminating jobs, jobs that are already precariously underpaid in many cases.

Sources

The behavior of Waymo’s self-driving taxis has apparently shifted in recent weeks or months, based on safety data collected by the company, and it means the cars are doing certain things more like real people do behind the wheel.

We don’t know the full extent to which Waymos vehicles have changed their behaviors via software adaptations. But the Chronicle points to a couple of new and “assertive” things the robot cars have been doing, including getting to a rolling start at a crosswalk after a pedestrian has nearly cleared the roadway — the kind of impatient maneuver most human drivers do, even if it is technically against the rules.

A USF engineering professor, William Riggs, took the Chronicle on a ride-along to observe these changes in behavior, which he’s apparently been carefully documenting. He refers to “minimum risk” and “tenatively evasive” maneuvers by the robots, and he’s seeing “a lot more anticipation and assertiveness from the vehicles” in general.

Waymo, the company, can confirm that this is happening. The company’s director of product management David Margines says that engineers have been testing various behaviors in an effort to keep the Waymo experience from being too frustratingly granny-like, with the robots following every traffic safety law to the letter, in order that people get where they’re going a bit quicker.

And, at least according to Margines and Waymo’s data — which we have not personally seen — adding in some of these more human behaviors has made the cars, paradoxically, safer.

“Being an assertive driver means that you’re more predictable, that you blend into the environment, that you do things that you expect other humans on the road to do,” Margines tells the Chronicle.

The company maintains that the robot cars remain far safer than those driven by humans, and they can execute quick evasive maneuvers when necessary that would be tough for most human drivers.

It remains to be seen, though, whether the robocars can figure out they’re being punked when they have orange cones on their hoods.

Related: You Might Be Able to Buy and Own Your Own Self-Driving Waymo Someday

Photo by Hoseung Han

Sebastian Thrun, cofounder of Waymo, told Business Insider that safety has always been the guiding ethos at the autonomous vehicle company.

Sebastian Thrun, cofounder of Waymo, told Business Insider that safety has always been the guiding ethos at the autonomous vehicle company. Lino Mirgeler/picture alliance via Getty Images

Sebastian Thrun, cofounder of Waymo, told Business Insider that safety has always been the guiding ethos at the autonomous vehicle company. Lino Mirgeler/picture alliance via Getty Images

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Sebastian Thrun, a pioneer in the self-driving industry, looks at Waymo like a proud dad.

Nearly 20 years ago, Thrun and his team at Stanford University made a pivotal leap in autonomous driving after their retrofitted Volkswagen completed a 132-mile course in the Nevada desert.

There was no human behind the wheel.

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The feat captured the attention of Google cofounder Larry Page. The then-CEO called Thrun and convinced him to head Google’s self-driving project, which would be part of Google X, the company’s research and development arm. There, some of the smartest and brightest pursued “moonshot” projects.

Since then, Thrun has watched autonomous cars grow from an experiment to a real-world business.

Waymo says it provides more than 250,000 paid fully autonomous rides. Artur Widak/Anadolu via Getty Images

The Google project was rebranded Waymo in 2016, two years after Thrun had already left the search engine company to start up a tech school. Thrun also headed the now-defunct Kittyhawk, a flying car project backed by Page.

Thrun spoke to BI about Waymo’s early aspirations, what it will take to dominate in the race to autonomy, and why he still hasn’t let go of his flying car ambitions.

A spokesperson for Waymo declined to provide a comment.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

When you jump-started what was once just a “moonshot” project inside Google X, what was the vision you had for the Google self-driving project, and does Waymo live up to or exceed your expectations?

Oh, it lives up to my exact expectations. We wanted to make cars safer with self-driving technology and build a business in which cars are used better than they are today, AKA a ride-sharing business.

In 2015, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt showed then-Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx Google’s self-driving car prototype that was dubbed “Firefly.” Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

On the timeline side, it proved to be a hard nut to crack because the tolerance to errors is extremely low.

For example, compare this with recent advances in large language models and chatbots. When a large language model hallucinates, we scratch our heads and are not happy, but no one dies.

When a self-driving car hallucinates, it might kill somebody or run a red light.

What did you imagine Waymo’s business model would look like at the time?

When I was running the team, we had business aspirations, but we had not worked out practical things like go-to-market strategies. And our aspiration was really to be the number one ride-sharing, ride-hailing taxi company in the world. But 99.9% of my time was dedicated to making the technology work. And remember, this was 10 years ago.

Do you think Waymo made the right decision by going city-by-city to get these highly detailed maps before it deploys a robotaxi service to the public?

One of Waymo’s early test vehicles was a modified Lexus RX 450h SUV. Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance via Getty Images

I believe that safety is paramount. The data suggests pretty clearly that Waymo is taking the right course here. Not only have the cars been remarkably safe — as you know, a recent study by Swiss Re showed that they’re safer than human drivers — but I also think Waymo has been able to build the trust of the public necessary to operate.

Do you think scaling autonomy is fundamentally a software problem that could be solved with more data, similar to AI models? Or do you think autonomy will always be bound by geographic limitations or infrastructure?

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No, I firmly believe that at some point, the technology will be good enough that you can forgo the necessity to build maps.

But I also want to point out that building maps is not an expensive step. It’s a bit of a side product of testing. We look at the number of miles that Waymo has been tested. It’s now in the tens of millions. If you apply this to the United States, that’s like mapping the United States over and over and over again. It’s not an expensive factor.

I’m pretty convinced that the technology is good enough even to drive without maps, but it’s just such a good thing to have — an advanced knowledge of where to expect certain things. And remember, the map changes all the time. There are construction zones and routing changes, so it’s not a constant thing. The vehicles are constantly remapping the environment.

So, do you envision a future where Waymo will increasingly have to rely less on these detailed maps or maybe even fewer sensors?

I can’t really speak for the current team here, because I’ve not been with them for a decade.

One of my observations is that, just looking at the field as a whole, the cost of sensors has gone down dramatically.

Waymo attaches a lidar to the roof of its robotaxi, which gives a 360-degree view of the vehicle’s environment. Smith Collection/Gado via Getty Images

Right now, I’d say the cost of lidar relative to IRAD (Internal Research and Development costs) is roughly down by a factor of 50. So, to the extent that the sensing argument is a cost argument, I think that as these cars will be produced in larger numbers, that argument will go away.

Then it comes to safety. My firm belief is that we should have any piece of software or equipment, including sensing equipment, that can be demonstrated to enhance safety. We are very tolerant of the lack of safety in human driving and tolerate more than a million deaths every year worldwide, which is a significant number. But I don’t think we should have the same tolerance for robotic systems. We should have a higher standard, and the higher standard will lead to fewer funerals.

John Krafcik, the former Waymo CEO, told me that when we talk about sensor costs, the cost argument is trivial. He believes that there are “quantifiable” benefits to safety.

You’ve tested it, trusted your life into it, and can see the reception now in San Francisco, which is really widely positive. It’s become an icon in the tourism industry. You come to San Francisco to try it out.

All these things are possible because of the radical focus on safety. Everything is speculation, but I think it’s such an important cornerstone that this technology is accepted and that we feel it defines a completely new level of safety and transportation.

In that case, what do you think of Tesla’s proposition: A generalized AI driver? No high-definition maps. No lidar. End-to-end AI driving.

Tesla unveiled a prototype of its Cybercab, a purpose-built car that the company says will be part of its larger robotaxi fleet. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

Look, I cannot comment on Tesla. I don’t know the details of the technology. I can only tell you what my ethos was when I built up the early version of Waymo. Our ethos was that safety is so paramount.

I can tell you, positively, that if you took Waymo and ripped out all the radars and lasers, that would make the car less safe. I can say that with confidence, even though I’m not part of the current team.

The laser and the radar provide a layer of environment understanding that is succinctly different from a camera. They’ll pick up objects just by virtue of being there, even if they’re unknown to the machine learning system. I know from the team that they’re obviously getting better and better with a subset of sensors.

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Can I ask like this then? What do you think will determine the “winner” of the robotaxi race? Is it the company that proves to be the safest, or is it one that will scale quicker first?

There are a number of elements. I would say safety is paramount.

The two remaining variables are cost and scale. They are intertwined, but they are not the same.

On the cost side, a self-driving car ultimately has to be cheaper than a human-driven car or comparable. I believe that cost is an important factor in transportation for the vast majority of people in the world.

And then scale is obvious, and scale is hard. It’s an enormous undertaking. If you look at the details of what this really entails, there’s capital, there’s maintenance, and there’s even manufacturing. So I think that now that we have the proof-of-concept, and it’s a working, very accepted and safe taxi system in four — and soon five cities — I’m sure that, and I’m not part of the leadership team at Waymo anymore, but I’m sure that, at Waymo, people are now thinking about how to scale it up.

Is there anything you think Waymo should be betting on or doubling down on right now?

Well, I’m a long-term fan of an even more radical proposal, which is flying cars.

Would I recommend that Waymo drop everything they do and start working on flying cars? No, I would not. But I can tell you the way flying cars are today is exactly the same way self-driving cars were 10 years ago. Ten years ago, when I left, we had prototypes in hand that were able to drive hundreds of thousands of miles without what we call “critical interventions,” where the driver had to take over — although with the caveat that this was mostly highway driving at the time.

But it was nowhere near a level of safety that would allow us to operate a commercial business. And obviously, between that time and today, new laws and regulations came into effect, putting a formal pathway in place that would’ve retroactively prohibited us from building a commercial service 10 years ago when I left.

Google cofounder Larry Page (left) backed Kittyhawk, a flying car startup, which Thrun (right) led until it shut down operations in 2022. Kimberly White/Getty Images for Fortune; Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch

The flying car situation is more nascent. There are now prototypes of electrically-propelled vehicles that can take off like helicopters. They’re super quiet and can fly for about a hundred miles, give or take.

But we are far from regulatory clarity. Aviation is regulated federally, not statewide, and has a very high bar that you have to meet to even be airworthy. No one has yet met that bar. This is more of a research and development project than a practical project.

Do you envision a future in which people are less inclined to drive?

Look, my prediction is going to be — and I can’t tell you what the timetable is — there will be cities that will realize that this technology is radically safer and radically greener. Every city in the world is full of parked cars, and we don’t think about this, but it’s quite a burden on the city. A friend of mine once calculated that about 60% of the land mass in Los Angeles is dedicated to cars when you count things like garages and driveways. So more than half.

There will be cities that say, “Look, we are ready to make our downtown area a parked-car-free area.”

Sebastian Thrun sits in front of the modified Volkswagen Touareg that helped his team at Stanford University win a self-driving car contest. Kim Kulish/Corbis via Getty Images

We’ll still have car-based transportation. But we’re going to make it greener. You want to make it safer and more pleasant for people. And we’re going to do it in a downtown area with lots of young people who don’t want to own a car to begin with. Or maybe university cities will do this.

I think we’re going to see this in the next few years, somewhere in the world, where cities will say that’s the right time. And what this really means is: For this to be true, it has to be the case that the car will become lower in cost than car ownership. At least that’s my belief. Because then you can even make an economical argument to people and say, “Look, you can own a car, but this thing, I mean, it’s cheaper.” And you save money on top of it. It’s greener, it’s safer, and cheaper. How would cities not want to do this at some point?

But look at New York, for example. It has congestion pricing right now. If you switch to self-driving cars, the very first thing you do away with is traffic lights. You don’t need them anymore because cars can communicate.

Your capacity will also increase. If self-driving cars are allowed on a highway, you could easily reduce the spacing between cars by a factor of two, which would double the capacity of the highway.

Anything you would be doing differently if you were behind the wheel at Waymo?

I’m the biggest fan. I open my door every morning and see two or three Waymos zipping by my house, and I couldn’t be prouder.

I’m really very, very proud. The leadership has done an amazing job navigating and has really earned the public’s trust, which I think is so important for technological innovations.

As protesters and police clash across Los Angeles and beyond, a striking image from the mayhem has been that of graffiti-strewn white cars engulfed in flames. But these aren’t ordinary cars. They’ve got sensors protruding from the top and sides—and, critically, they’ve got no drivers. Waymo, a robotaxi company, found itself at the center of the demonstrations against the Trump Administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids after a group of protesters over the weekend, according to the Los Angeles Times, approached a parked row of the autonomous vehicles and smashed their windows, slashed their tires, spray-painted them with anti-ICE slogans, and set them on fire.

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A row of Waymo vehicles burn on a street in downtown Los Angeles on June 8, 2025. Benjamin Hanson—Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Images

While eye-catching, the trend is also extremely dangerous. Electric vehicles, like those in Waymo’s fleet, have lithium-ion batteries, and in a post on X, the L.A. Police Department warned: “Burning lithium-ion batteries release toxic gases, including hydrogen fluoride, posing risks to responders and those nearby.” According to Scientific American, first responders exposed to the fumes of burnt lithium-ion batteries without protection historically “have developed throat burns and breathing difficulties upon arriving,” and, depending on the hydrogen fluoride levels, individuals can start coughing up blood within minutes of exposure.

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At least six Waymo vehicles across the county have reportedly been the target of vandalism, resulting in the company temporarily suspending operations in the area “out of an abundance of caution.” California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass have condemned the violence and destruction, which Newsom attributed to “insurgent groups” and “anarchists” who have infiltrated otherwise peaceful protests. President Donald Trump, who mobilized the National Guard to respond to the situation, has called the demonstrators “troublemakers” and “paid insurrectionists.”

Here’s what to know. What is Waymo?

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Waymo is a subsidiary of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, and grew out of the Google Self-Driving Car project that began in 2009. It launched its robotaxi business in 2020 in limited markets, which grew to include Los Angeles in 2024. While the company says its mission “is to be the world’s most trusted driver,” a national survey earlier this year found that “6 in 10 U.S. drivers still report being afraid to ride in a self-driving vehicle” while the proportion of people enthusiastic about the development of the technology has actually decreased from 18% in 2022 to 13% in 2025. Waymo vehicles were involved in 696 accidents across the U.S. between 2021 and 2024, or about one accident every other day. MKP Law Group, a Los-Angeles based firm that represents clients involved in accidents, acknowledged in a blog post that this statistic “is not necessarily indicative of Waymo causing those accidents, as some may have been the fault of the other involved drivers.” Studies show that self-driving technology is likely safer than most human drivers.

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A person spray-paints a Waymo car during anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles on June 8, 2025. Mario Tama—Getty Images

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Why is Waymo being targeted in the L.A. protests? Several potential explanations have emerged for why Waymo vehicles were targeted during the protests in Los Angeles. The Wall Street Journal reported that part of the reason the cars were vandalized was to obstruct traffic—a traditional, albeit controversial, protest tactic. Some social media users have suggested that self-driving vehicles in particular have become a new target because they are seen by protesters as “part of the police surveillance state.” Waymo’s cars are equipped with cameras that provide a 360-degree view of their surroundings, a tool that has been tapped by law enforcement, according to reports. Independent tech news site 404 Media reported in April that the Los Angeles Police Department obtained footage from a Waymo driverless car to use as part of an investigation into an unrelated hit-and-run. And Bloomberg reported in 2023 that police have increasingly relied on self-driving cars and their cameras for video evidence. Chris Gilliard, a fellow at the Social Science Research Council, told Bloomberg that self-driving vehicles are “essentially surveillance cameras on wheels,” adding: “We’re supposed to be able to go about our business in our day-to-day lives without being surveilled unless we are suspected of a crime, and each little bit of this technology strips away that ability.” Waymo told Bloomberg at the time that it “carefully” reviews every request from police “to make sure it satisfies applicable laws and has a valid legal process.”

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A protestor holds a sign in front of a burning Waymo vehicle during an anti-ICE protest in Los Angeles on June 8, 2025. Blake Fagan—AFP/Getty Images

Some activists have also suggested that the burning of Waymo vehicles should garner less sympathy from onlookers.

“There are people on here saying it’s violent and domestic terrorism to set a Waymo car on fire,” racial justice organizer Samuel Sinyangwe posted on X. “A robot car? Are you going to demand justice for the robot dogs next? But not the human beings repeatedly shot with rubber bullets in the street? What kind of politics is this?”

“There is no human element to Waymo,” climate and labor organizer Elise Joshi similarly posted on X. “It’s expensive and bought-out politicians are using it as an excuse to defund public transit. I pray on Waymo’s downfall.”

One of the most intriguing growth opportunities for Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG)(NASDAQ: GOOGL) these days is in robotaxis, via its Waymo business. It has the potential to revolutionize the taxi industry. Last year, it averaged 150,000 trips per week, and that number is going to climb even higher this year, as the service expands into more markets.

But despite Waymo’s promising potential, here’s why I think it’s highly likely that Alphabet will spin off the business within the next five years.

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Alphabet is already spending heavily on artificial intelligence

Creating and maintaining a growing fleet of robotaxis is going to be expensive. And the danger for Alphabet is that as Waymo grows in size, Alphabet’s operations may get much more complex and costly amid that process. It’s already operating in multiple cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin, and Phoenix. However, Waymo has recently announced plans for more cities, with Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and Tokyo being on the list of markets it wants to expand into in the near future.

The problem is that by expanding into more markets, Waymo’s costs are going to rise significantly at a time when Alphabet is investing heavily in artificial intelligence (AI). This year alone, Alphabet expects to spend $75 billion on building out its AI infrastructure.

In the midst of an AI battle involving many other tech companies, Alphabet is looking to protect its search dominance — and it’s investing in its Gemini chatbot to ensure that at least if users are relying on chatbots rather than Google Search, it’s Gemini that they are using. The company is facing a considerable risk in its core business, one that it hasn’t had to worry about in the past. AI chatbots could give other companies a way to finally wrestle away some valuable market share and ad spend from Alphabet.

Waymo may unlock billions in value for Alphabet

By spinning off Waymo, Alphabet may also be able to unlock a lot more value for itself and investors. Last year, Waymo was reportedly estimated to be worth more than $45 billion, based on a recent funding round. But with the business expanding and reaching more markets throughout the country, it’s probable that Waymo’s valuation will go much higher in the future.

That money could help Alphabet pursue other acquisitions that are more complementary to AI and its core operations. Plus, by spinning it off, the company may also be able to save billions by not having to spend more money in expanding and growing Waymo’s business. By focusing on their core competencies and strengths, individually, businesses can sometimes achieve greater efficiencies and results in the long run than if they are all under the same umbrella.

Alphabet has gotten Waymo to this point, but the more compelling move may be to retain a stake in the car company and let it operate as a separate entity.

Why this could be a win-win for investors

A stock spinoff of Waymo could allow investors to have a stake in two fast-growing businesses: Alphabet and Waymo. And if you end up preferring one over the other, you could always sell your holdings in one of them. You only have to look at the excitement around Tesla and its robotaxis to see why investors may be thrilled with a Waymo spinoff as the stock could generate a lot of bullishness itself, and may even lure some investors away from Tesla if it’s able to demonstrate superior results.

Right now, investors have to take the whole package — Alphabet with all of its other businesses. By spinning off Waymo, investors will have more choice, and that could result in a much higher valuation for the two businesses combined rather than where Alphabet sits today.

Regardless of what ends up happening, you may want to consider buying and holding Alphabet stock, especially given its modest valuation; it’s trading at 18 times its trailing earnings. Either way, whether the company spins off Waymo or it doesn’t, you can stand to benefit from its future growth. Under the best-case scenario, a spin-off does end up taking place and you’ll have two terrific growth stocks in your portfolio.

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Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. David Jagielski has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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