Waymo is letting you tip — but there’s a catch

A security researcher who lives in San Francisco discovered an unreleased feature in Waymo’s app that allows customers to tip for their robotaxi rides.

Jane Manchun Wong, a security researcher who also successfully hacked the display dome on top of a Waymo vehicle to display her name, posted a screenshot of the new tipping feature on X. Alongside buttons for “dismiss,” “view walk,” and “share trip stats,” new button reads “add a ‘tip’,” with “tip” conspicuously in quotes.

But before you get indignant about greedy tech companies suckering customers into blithely handing their hard-earned cash over to robots, it appears that the new function is just a roundabout way to solicit charity donations. Wong posted another screenshot in which customers are asked to select a charity from a dropdown menu.

Wong told The Verge that she discovered the new feature while poking around inside Waymo’s Android app and “reverse engineering it.” She theorizes that it may be a wholesome prank, perhaps getting ready for April Fools Day.

“It’s for charity — so I think it’s great!” she added. “Maybe after Apr 1, they could consider incorporating the charity feature permanently, like rounding up for donation.”

Others saw ulterior motives, with one X user noting that Waymo likely receives tax breaks from the government for collecting a certain amount of charitable donations. Some wondered whether asking for a “tip” for a self-driving car would backfire and cast a negative light on Waymo. After all, eliminating the need to tip a human driver has always been among the selling points for robotaxis.

But that hasn’t stopped some Bay Area tech workers from calling for a tipping feature. Some clearly are joking, but there is a sense that Waymo deserves extra revenue for providing a desirable service. (Waymo has yet to break even, with parent company Alphabet recently committing $5.6 billion to the project.)

Waymo’s public image is still very much a work-in-progress. While the company continues to release data that shows its vehicles are safer than humans, public opinion on robot-driven cars is still fairly negative. A recent survey from AAA found that 64 percent of respondents expressed fear about self-driving cars. And several Waymo vehicles have been vandalized in the past few years, most recently in Los Angeles during an illegal street takeover.

A spokesperson for Waymo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.