Will f*cking with cats kill Waymo?

You know that moment when an animal gets killed by a bad guy in a movie and you get outraged and almost turn off the flick? Yeah, something like that happened in real life in San Francisco this week. A Waymo ran over and killed a loved bodega cat and now the whole neighborhood is up in arms and city laws are possibly being changed to destroy Waymo

Funny how Waymo gets away with causing deadly accidents, destroying property, constantly jamming traffic and being a bit weird all together, but when one accidentally kills KitKat, a loved kitty who spend it's days in a small bodega in SF's Mission District, people get more outraged than ever before.

And I do mean accidentally in the most literal sense. According to Waymo's review of the footage, KitKat darted under the driverless taxi just before it drove away, killing the kitty in the process of taking off. According to bystanders things happend differently: the Waymo pulled over pretty much right on the place where KitKat was chilling. The car didn't unalive (as the kids are calling 'killing' nowadays) the poor cat straight away, it took a trip to the vet and a couple hours of pure agony before KitKat let go of the last of his 9 lives. What happened to the other 8 is still unclear.

Back to the issue at hand: since the Waymo doesn't have any sensors under the car, there was no way it could now there was a cat hiding there. You could argue that it might have caught sight of KitKat when he shot under the taxi. That would mean the vehicle could've know it there since no cat had come out from under the car before it left. I mean, Waymo itself told the public it knew the cat got under the car without being any one of the company being there in person at the time of the hit and run.

And this, dear reader, is a perfect example of the ridiculously small problems Waymo has to deal with on its path to tackle all faults.

After KitKat's tragic death, I'm fully prepared to post a black square on my instagram to remember KitKat and boycot Waymo all together (which is easy since I'm not even allowed to be a customer). But taking some online action doesn't seem to be enough to some people. According to the SF Chronicle city officials are asking questions about why Waymo's are even allowed to drive around in the city without consent of its inhabitants. Currently there is a call for legislation that will empower counties to ban self driving cars.

It doesn't seem like the proposed legislation will ever pass a vote. It's easy to see why: most of the officials are (financially) more connected to the tech companies in the city. But it would be very unwise to underestimate cat lovers. Just check out the documentary Don't F*ck With Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer on Netflix.

In other news:

There is a new Renault Twingo that is getting the Internets panties in a bunch. It's small, fully electric (with a LFP-battery) and has a WLTP-range of 263 km, which - in case of Renault - probably means around 150 real world km's. It looks the almost the same as the Twingo everybody knows. Which some call 'retro'. I call it: 'the French couldn't even be bothered to change the aging design'. Want it? It'll cost you at least 20.000 euro's.

Even Mister Musk has issues with believing the shit he’s talking. When asked about if we’ll ever see the Roadster 2, the CEO said the company is aiming for a demo of the new version on, and this is very Musk-funny, April 1st 2026. The very funny man explained this deadline as having some deniability in case they won’t make it or there will be no car at all.

Lu Weibing, the Big Man at Chinese car brand Xiaomi, has been showing the Germans how to drive on the Autobahn for two days this week. He took a XU7 on two trips totaling 800 km's through Germany reporting top speeds of 260 km/h. Officially it was