Sunnyvale man’s luggage was driven to a San Francisco depot after a Waymo’s trunk failed to open at SJC; Waymo offered shipping at his cost or two free rides to retrieve it.
Key Takeaways
Trunk is designed to open automatically on exit and via in-app “open trunk” button; neither worked in this case.
Waymo support said the vehicle could not be turned around mid-route back to the SF depot.
Waymo’s stated policy: not responsible for lost items left in the vehicle.
A similar incident occurred with a San Francisco rider in April 2025, resulting in missing tennis gear.
Waymo launched SJC airport service in September 2025, making edge cases like this more likely for new users.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters with prior Waymo trunk experience say the car normally pops the trunk proactively and prompts passengers to retrieve items, making this failure mode surprising and likely a hardware or sensor fault.
Consensus leans toward escalating to the California DMV, CPUC, or the airport authority rather than accepting Waymo’s remediation options, given the trunk failure was not user error.
Notable Comments
@disillusioned: Reports Waymo normally pre-emptively opens the trunk on exit with a reminder, suggesting a latch or opening-system malfunction rather than a UX gap.
@cheriot: “Thank you, Sunnyvale man, for hitting this edge case before I do.”
