Several of Waymo’s autonomous vehicles were seen stranded in the middle of San Francisco streets after a significant power outage knocked out the city’s traffic lights. Waymo responded to the power outage by suspending its ride-hailing services in the city, but images and videos on social media showed self-driving taxis stopped at intersections with hazard lights.
“We have temporarily suspended our ride-hailing services in the San Francisco Bay Area due to the widespread power outages,” Waymo spokesperson Suzanne Fillion told Engadget in an email. “Our teams are working diligently and in close coordination with city officials, and we hope to bring our services back online soon.”
The cause of the power outage was reported to be a fire at a Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) substation. The incident began sometime Saturday morning, which PG&E said affected about 130,000 customers. As of Sunday morning, the Californian power company said its crews had restored power to about 110,000 of those customers, while working on the remaining 21,000 customers in “small areas of the Presidio, Richmond District, Golden Gate Park and Downtown San Francisco.”
Waymo has offered no explanation as to why its autonomous cars became stuck on San Francisco streets due to a power outage, but the episode may reveal a notable glitch in the Waymo driver system. Waymo indicated on its website that its autonomous driving system “reacts to signs and signals such as traffic light colors and temporary stop signs,” which could indicate that self-driving cars were encountering out-of-order street lights. Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, also took the opportunity to yell at X, posting that “Tesla robotaxis were unaffected by SF power outage.”
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