Power Outage Causes Frozen Waymos to Snarl San Francisco Traffic
A power outage hit San Francisco on Saturday, affecting around 130,000 customers at its peak, as reported by Pacific Gas and Electric Company. This incident also led to another issue: Waymo’s autonomous vehicles became stranded. Social media was flooded with posts showing the company’s self-driving SUVs stuck in traffic, contributing to congestion.
Meanwhile, videos surfaced of Teslas utilizing their Full Self-Driving (FSD) feature to navigate the same streets, prompting Elon Musk to tweet that “Tesla Robotaxis were unaffected by the SF power outage.” On Sunday evening, Waymo spokesperson Suzanne Philion announced, “We are resuming ride-hailing service in the San Francisco Bay Area.”
In response to inquiries, Philion stated that the ride-hailing services were temporarily suspended due to the widespread power outage, emphasizing the importance of rider safety and ensuring emergency services had clear access to perform their duties. By 2 PM PT, PG&E reported that service had been restored to about 114,000 of the affected customers as they continued repairs following a fire at a five-story power substation.
Later that evening, Philion provided an update: “We are resuming ride-hailing service in the San Francisco Bay Area. Yesterday’s power outage caused significant gridlock across the city, with non-functioning traffic signals and transit disruptions. While the utility infrastructure failure was considerable, we are dedicated to ensuring our technology adapts to traffic conditions during such events. Throughout the outage, we coordinated closely with city officials and are focused on integrating the lessons learned to maintain the trust of the communities we serve.”
The exact reason for the vehicles’ immobility remains unclear, with no updates from the company’s social media channels. Speculation suggests that unreliable wireless data connections, due to cell towers being down or overloaded, and non-operational streetlights contributed to the issue.
This isn’t the first time such problems have arisen; earlier TikTok videos showed Waymo vehicles halted by malfunctioning streetlights and during a power outage in Austin, Texas. A former employee commented on a Reddit post about a similar situation last year, explaining that the vehicle sends a request to a remote assistant and waits for a response before moving.
According to a company blog, when the car encounters “unique interactions,” it reaches out to a human response agent, providing live and recorded camera views along with a 3D map of sensor data. However, these interactions may require bandwidth that can be scarce during significant outages. While specific statistics on the number of remote assistance operators available at any time are not readily available, Waymo did announce in November that it successfully passed a third-party audit by Tüv Süd, a German tech inspection company, which evaluated its remote assistance program against industry best practices.
