A San Francisco energy outage left Waymo's self-driving vehicles stranded at intersections

A number of of Waymo’s autonomous automobiles had been seen caught in the midst of San Francisco streets following a big energy outage that took out the town’s site visitors lights. Waymo responded to the facility outage by suspending its ride-hailing providers within the metropolis, however photos and movies on social media confirmed the self-driving taxis stopped at intersections with hazard lights on.

“We’ve got quickly suspended our ride-hailing providers within the San Francisco Bay Space as a result of widespread energy outage,” Suzanne Philion, a spokesperson for Waymo, advised Engadget in an e mail. “Our groups are working diligently and in shut coordination with metropolis officers, and we’re hopeful to deliver our providers again on-line quickly.”

The facility outage was attributed to a hearth at one in every of Pacific Fuel & Electrical (PG&E)’s substations. The incident started someday on Saturday morning, which PG&E stated affected roughly 130,000 clients. As of Sunday morning, the Californian energy firm stated its crews have restored energy to about 110,000 of these clients, whereas engaged on the remaining 21,000 clients in “the Presidio, Richmond District, Golden Gate Park and small areas of downtown San Francisco.”

Waymo hasn’t offered an evidence as to why the facility outage left its autonomous vehicles stranded in San Francisco streets, however this episode could have revealed a notable fault with the Waymo Driver system. Waymo signifies on its web site that its autonomous driving system “responds to indicators and indicators, like site visitors mild colours and momentary cease indicators,” which might point out that the self-driving vehicles struggled with the out-of-order road lights. Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, additionally noticed a chance to chime in on X, posting that “Tesla Robotaxis had been unaffected by the SF energy outage.”