Some from Waymo autonomous vehicles were seen stranded in the middle of the streets of San Francisco after a major power outage knocked out the city's traffic lights. Waymo responded to the power outage by suspending taxi services in the city, but images And video social networks showed that driverless taxis stop at intersections with their hazard lights on.
“We have temporarily suspended our ride-hailing services in the San Francisco Bay Area due to widespread power outages,” Suzanne Filion, a Waymo spokesperson, told Engadget via email. “Our teams are working diligently and in close coordination with the City, and we look forward to bringing our services back online soon.”
The cause of the power outage was a fire at one of the Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) substations. The incident began sometime on Saturday morning. PG&E said affected about 130,000 customers. As of Sunday morningThe California power company said its crews restored power to about 110,000 of those customers while working with the remaining 21,000 customers in “the Presidio, Richmond County, Golden Gate Park and smaller areas of downtown San Francisco.”
Waymo has not provided an explanation for why the power outage left its autonomous vehicles stranded on the streets of San Francisco, but the episode may have exposed a noticeable glitch in the Waymo Driver system. Waymo states on its website that its autonomous driving system “responds to signs and signals, such as traffic light colors and stop signs,” which could indicate that self-driving cars were struggling with failed street lights. Tesla CEO Elon Musk also saw an opportunity to intervene. by Xpublishing that “Tesla Robotaxi were unaffected due to a power outage in San Francisco.”
