Power went out in San Francisco on Saturday, leaving about 130,000 customers without power at its peak. According to Pacific Gas & Electric Companybut it also caused another problem: stranded Waymo vehicles. Posts all over social media showed the company’s self-driving SUVs sitting in the streets and causing traffic jams.
Some people posted videos of Tesla cars using their FSD feature to navigate the same streets as Elon Musk chirp “Tesla Robotaxis was not affected by the SF power outage.”
In response to an inquiry from EdgeWaymo spokeswoman Susan Fillion sent a statement saying: “We have temporarily suspended our ride-hailing services due to widespread power outages in San Francisco. We are focused on keeping our riders safe and ensuring emergency personnel have the clear access they need to do their jobs.” PG&E reported as of 7 a.m. PT that “crews have recovered approximately 110,000 customers and PG&E continues to work to restore the remaining 21,000 customers, primarily in the Presidio, Richmond area, Golden Gate Park and small areas of downtown San Francisco,” as repairs continued after a fire at a five-story power substation.
The exact reason why the cars were not moving remains unclear, with no public updates that we could find on the company’s social media channels, but speculation centered on spotty wireless data connections, with cell phone towers down or overloaded by people who no longer had access to Wi-Fi, and/or street lights that were not working without electricity.
However, these issues have happened before, as seen in TikTok videos earlier this year featuring Waymos I froze due to a faulty street light and During a power outage in Austin, Texas. In a response to a Reddit post showing another similar situation last year, someone said they were former employees Comment Explaining that the vehicle will send a request to the remote assistant and wait for his response before continuing.
According to To the company’s blog postIt communicates with a human responder when the car experiences “unique interactions,” providing them with live and recorded views from its cameras as well as a 3D map of what the sensors are capturing. However, this may require bandwidth that is difficult to find during a major power outage. I couldn’t find any statistics on how many remote assistance operators Waymo has available at a given time, but in November, the company announced Tüv Süd, a German technology inspection company, announced that it has passed a third-party audit which has evaluated its remote assistance program according to industry best practices.