A Waymo robotaxi can be fooled into rolling straight into a flooded street, but it turns out the same self-driving cars have no trouble pulling getaway duty for a crime. They are, it seems, alarmingly good at helping criminals disappear.

Earlier this year, an unidentified suspect walked into a Hot 8 Yoga studio in San Francisco and left in a hurry with an armful of pricey activewear. He had arrived by Waymo and used the same car to escape, dumping the loot into the trunk of the autonomous I-Pace before riding off.

Watch: Dozens Of Empty Waymo Robotaxis Keep Circling An Atlanta Cul-De-Sac For Hours

As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, local authorities took their time looking into the theft. A search warrant landed on Waymo in April, ordering the company to hand over everything it knew about the account behind the ride, along with video from inside and outside the car to help identify the thief.

However, by the time the search warrant was filed in April, Waymo had already wiped the cabin footage. The company doesn’t publicly say how long it keeps video, and on top of that, its exterior cameras always blur faces for privacy reasons. So despite each robotaxi packing a small arsenal of high-definition cameras, none of them helped track down the thief.

That’s a tough pill to swallow when you consider the hardware involved. According to Waymo’s website, its latest Jaguars feature 29 cameras that provide a full 360-degree view of their surroundings. The user’s account information didn’t lead police to a suspect either, perhaps because whoever booked the ride used stolen credentials or a burner phone.

All For Some Men’s Shorts

The studio manager of Hot 8 Yoga says footage from outside the location shows the Waymo dropping off the individual and waiting for him to return with the stolen loot. Although he only made off with a bunch of men’s shorts, it’s certainly possible this case might encourage other criminals to escape in robotaxis.

Los Angeles saw a version of this last year, when someone bolted from a grocery store theft in a Waymo. That one ended differently. Police caught up with the robotaxi, forced it to the side of the road, and arrested the suspect.

The popularity of powerful all-electric motorcycles has surged in recent years, partly because of their affordability and the fact that they are often classified as e-bikes, meaning they do not require registration or a driver’s license. Amazon is now moving to make some of them harder to buy in California.

The retail giant announced it will stop selling certain electric bikes capable of exceeding California’s legal speed limits. The state currently caps pedal-assisted e-bikes at 28 mph (45 km/h) and throttle-assisted e-bikes, the type more commonly used by casual riders, at 20 mph (32 km/h).

Read: Parents Might Pay The Price For Their Kid’s E-Bike Recklessness

Many manufacturers of more powerful electric two-wheelers, often with designs inspired by traditional dirt bikes, have been able to skirt local legislation by labeling them as e-bikes, even though some can exceed 60 mph (96 km/h). However, state laws do require e-bikes that exceed speed limits to be registered and to comply with certain age restrictions.

“The things people are selling as e-bikes are clearly motorcycles, mopeds, off-road dirt bikes, out-of-class devices that might have pedals, and they can sell them as ‘e-bikes’ because they are electric and they are bikes, but they’re totally illegal for electric bicycles,” Bill Sellin from the Orange County Bicycle Coalition told ABC 7.

Crashes Are On The Rise

Amazon’s crackdown comes shortly after California Attorney General Rob Bonta emphasized existing laws around e-bikes. Over the past four years, crashes and injuries linked to e-bikes and electric motorcycles have risen 430 percent in Southern California.

More recently, Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer’s office filed manslaughter charges against the mother of a 14-year-old boy accused of hitting and killing an 81-year-old man while riding an electric motorcycle. Authorities say the mother had been warned multiple times that her son was not legally allowed to ride it.

For years, California has set the pace for EV adoption in America, the bellwether other states watched. Now the bellwether is wobbling. Recent sales data reveal a significant decline in the state’s EV registrations through the first quarter of the year, driven by a sharp drop in demand for new Tesla models.

So far this year, a total of 57,111 zero-emission vehicles (ZEV) have been sold across the Golden State. This represents a significant 40.2 percent decline from the 95,520 sold over the same period last year, and comes on the back of an overall drop in new car registrations of 8.9 percent, falling from 457,525 to 416,810.

Read: Rivian Beat Four Major Automakers In EV Sales, And Its Biggest Model Hasn’t Even Launched Yet

The decline in demand for ZEVs means they accounted for just 13.7 percent of the total market in Q1 2026. By comparison, they had a 16.6 percent share in Q1 2022, peaking at 22 percent in Q1 2024 before falling slightly to 21 percent in Q1 2025.

Things look particularly troubling for Tesla. First-quarter registrations fell 24.3 percent to 31,958, down from 42,211 a year earlier. In raw volume, no brand lost more. In percentage terms, Tesla actually weathered the storm better than most of its rivals. Despite its own losses, Tesla’s slice of the EV pie grew from 44.2 percent in Q1 2025 to 56 percent last quarter, less because Tesla improved than because everyone else collapsed around it.

Most Brands Suffer

The collapse around Tesla is brutal. Over at Acura, ZEV sales fell from 1,279 to just 11 units in Q1, down 99.1 percent. Audi managed 210 registrations against 2,319 a year earlier, down 90.9 percent. BMW fell 58.9 percent, from 5,301 to 2,180. Chevrolet dropped 59.6 percent to 1,875. Ford was off 58.8 percent at 2,374. Honda plunged 81.6 percent to 832. Dodge mustered 16 units, down 79.7 percent. Hyundai held up comparatively well, off 30.4 percent at 3,586.

Only a handful of brands moved the other way. Lexus posted the standout figure, climbing 192.1 percent to 1,405 units, while Toyota grew 37.8 percent to 2,599 and Lucid added 37.1 percent to reach 1,315. Cadillac edged up 17.1 percent to 1,771.

Several factors have fed into the decline. Affordability concerns remain prevalent across the state, as they are throughout the country, while financing costs remain high due to current interest rates. Additionally, tariffs have driven higher prices, and overall inflation has spiked, while the phase-out of the federal tax credit has done the rest. None of this is mysterious, it all adds up.

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