Robotaxis Are Crowding Out Drivers at San Diego's EV Chargers
As Waymo's robotaxi fleet grows in San Diego, drivers say packs of driverless cars are tying up scarce public chargers, and city leaders want more say over how autonomous vehicles operate.
What happened: Since Waymo officially launched robotaxi service in San Diego in September, residents say its driverless cars keep showing up in groups at public EV charging stations and tying up plugs for long stretches. Drivers like Jose Manjarres and Finn Sadler describe waiting 30 minutes to an hour just to charge their own cars because three or four Waymos filled every spot at once. The stations, run by Electrify America and EVgo, are open to any vehicle, and neither company has an official charging deal with Waymo. Waymo says it sometimes posts staff at public chargers to help its cars plug in and tries to stop them from bunching up, but admits that is hard in cities where it has not built its own dedicated charging yet.
Why it matters: This is a small, concrete version of a bigger problem: robotaxi fleets and ordinary residents now compete for the same limited public resources, and nobody set clear rules in advance. The pattern is not new. Santa Monica ordered Waymo's charging contractor to stop overnight operations after noise complaints, and drivers in Nashville and St. Louis have posted photos of robotaxis crowding out scarce public fast chargers. San Diego Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera frames it as a fairness issue: commuters who cannot charge at home, he says, are now competing with robots that can hover for a public resource their taxes help fund.
How it works, plainly: Waymo's fleet needs power around the clock to keep running, so in a city without dedicated robotaxi charging, its cars fall back on the same public fast chargers everyday drivers use. Because Waymos can queue and reposition themselves automatically, several can arrive and occupy a station at once in a way a single human driver rarely would. Waymo says that as it matures in a market it builds or leases its own charging hubs, as it has in parts of Los Angeles and San Francisco, which should ease pressure on public stations over time. Until that infrastructure exists, though, chargers are effectively first-come, first-served between commuters and commercial robotaxi fleets.
The response: San Diego's City Council voted unanimously in September to ask Governor Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers for more local control over where and how autonomous vehicles operate, including keeping charging hubs away from homes, schools and safety facilities. The city also plans to add chargers at more than 50 public sites over the next 18 months, though officials say that effort is not tied to Waymo's rollout. Because California law currently puts AV regulation in state hands, not cities, places like Commerce in L.A. County are limited to steps like extra patrols, and LAX says it has no timeline for letting Waymo operate at the airport.