Waymo Has A Charging Problem

• Waymo has been ordered by Santa Monica, California city officials to halt overnight charging operations at two neighborhood facilities.
• Residents have complained about the autonomous taxis returning home at night to charge, causing constant beeping sounds and noises from charging equipment.
• It raises a crucial question: As AVs scale, where are they supposed to charge up near their service areas without disrupting local folks?

If you live around Broadway and 14th Street in Santa Monica, California, it sounds like you haven’t been getting very restful sleep lately. 

That area is also home to two charging hubs for the fast-growing autonomous taxi service Waymo, and it’s where neighbors have been dealing with overnight commotion for months. As the AVs return home from their driving shifts, local folks have been subjected to constant beeping from reverse sensors, noise from charging equipment, cleaning, traffic congestion and flashing lights, according to local news reports. As many as 56 AVs reportedly charge at the two sites. 

But residents scored a victory against their noisy autonomous neighbor this week. The Santa Monica City Council unanimously voted to order Waymo to halt overnight charging operations at the outdoor depots. “The City has received many complaints from neighboring residents regarding the Broadway Lots, and particularly that the overnight operations of the lots are very disruptive to their sleep, peace and quiet, and enjoyment of their homes,” city officials wrote in a letter to the Google-owned AV service.

It’s unclear whether Waymo or its Virginia-based charging operator, Volterra, intends to comply.

Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times reported that neither planned to, saying city officials misunderstood their existing permit rights. “In response to neighbors’ feedback, we adjusted our operations at the site, and we’ll continue to seek community input,” Waymo officials told the newspaper without addressing the order directly. 

But as the AV industry ends 2025 poised to hit critical mass, the Santa Monica noise dispute raises a bigger question that all of these players will have to address: where are all of these cars supposed to charge, and how can they do so without disrupting their neighbors?

In theory, the ideal place for dozens—and perhaps ultimately hundreds or even thousands—of AVs is off in some remote depot full of DC fast-chargers and away from houses and apartments where their beeping, flashing lights and traffic can disrupt local residents. But the name of any transit service game is reducing deadhead miles: the distance traveled without any riders aboard, which means no revenue is being generated. 

Then you add in the challenges around range loss. AVs are overwhelmingly electric vehicles, so if their charging depots are too far from their service area, they’re operating at a handicap in terms of overall driving range. (The same would even be true if these were gas-powered cars, when you think about it.) So it does behoove the AV industry to want to situate charging locations as close to the cities they serve as possible.

But clearly, doing this in some residential neighborhood isn’t an ideal solution. Not when you hear what Santa Monica residents have been dealing with every night between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. According to KTLA, local law enforcement has gotten involved with at least one person who has “attempted to disrupt operations at the facilities” on several occasions. In other words, people are clearly pretty incensed about this. 

This is not the first time that AV operators, and Waymo specifically, have been cited as a public nuisance in one of the many cities they now serve. Last year, residents of San Francisco’s South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood said they were besieged by Waymos honking at each other while attempting to park themselves at an idling station—sometimes as early as 4 a.m. More recently, Palo Alto residents have complained of whole Waymo convoys moving through normally quiet residential neighborhoods. And in San Francisco’s Inner Richmond area, neighbors have put up signs begging people not to summon Waymos in the evening, saying their noise has become unbearable.

But added congestion is one thing. Figuring out where to put AV charging so it isn’t wholly disruptive to neighbors is a different sort of challenge. The noise from any public EV charging site may be irksome to the folks who live nearby. But the nuisance problem associated with Waymo’s charging sites is distinctly different from the typical noise of a single EV charger, since they’re meant to serve dozens (or more) AVs meant to be in continual round-the-clock service. 

Clearly, Waymo isn’t slowing down its expansion efforts, so this may be a problem that needs a Google-style breakthrough solution sooner rather than later.

Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com