Santa Monica, California — 

It’s nearing midnight as the young man scurries through a dark alley. He wears a mask and overalls and is armed with a roll of duct tape. As he nears his target – a driverless robot taxi – he tears off some tape to disable the futuristic car’s sensors.

“We just want the Waymos to stop beeping at night,” he says. “They’re really disturbing us. They’re disturbing our neighbors.”

The man and others call themselves “stackers,” and most nights you’ll find them, faces masked from security cameras, on a mission. They stand in the way of robotaxis, so the cars are forced to line up in a stack in an alley and can’t access two charging lots near downtown Santa Monica that Waymo opened in January, with little fanfare and apparently zero prior public awareness. “We’ll try lasering the next one,” one stacker says to another. “We’re just running some routine experiments to see what it takes to properly stack a Waymo.”

Bron: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/25/us/santa-monica-waymo-battles