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

A number of of Waymo’s autonomous vehicles have been seen caught in the course 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 companies within the metropolis, however images and videos on social media confirmed the self-driving taxis stopped at intersections with hazard lights on.

“We have now briefly suspended our ride-hailing companies within the San Francisco Bay Space because of the widespread energy outage,” Suzanne Philion, a spokesperson for Waymo, informed Engadget in an e mail. “Our groups are working diligently and in shut coordination with metropolis officers, and we’re hopeful to convey our companies again on-line quickly.”

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

Waymo hasn’t offered a proof 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 alerts, like site visitors gentle colours and momentary cease indicators,” which may 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 were unaffected by the SF energy outage.”