Waymos froze, blocked traffic during San Francisco power outage

[NEW YORK] Waymo’s driverless ride services were a high-profile victim of a power outage that affected large swaths of San Francisco, with cars freezing mid-ride across the city and disrupting traffic.

After traffic lights went dark at major intersections on Saturday (Dec 20), social media videos showed multiple cars stopped in the middle of the street with their hazard lights flashing.

The power failures, which at one point affected 130,000 customers, closed stores and disrupted transit during the busy holiday shopping period, including many Waymo cars, Alphabet’s self-driving taxi service.

Michele Riva, 30, was going home on Saturday evening in a Waymo car when the outage happened. His car had kept moving when they were in a less transited area of the city, even with passengers crossing on the street, he said. He was only a minute away from his destination when the car stopped in front of a “very dense intersection” and non-working traffic lights, he said, without giving him any notice.

“I stayed in the Waymo for a couple of minutes, just to see,” said Riva, who is an engineer working in artificial intelligence. “The problem was that, at the beginning, there were a lot of people crossing the streets because there were no traffic lights. So I believe the Waymo just didn’t know what to do.”

PG&E, which blamed the outage on a fire in a substation, began restoring most of the service on Saturday evening. By Sunday morning, PG&E said that it has restored service for 110,000 customers, but 21,000 remain without electricity.

Riva tried contacting customer support for about three minutes while he was stuck in the immobile car, but gave up after the wait time became too long as the service was overwhelmed with other passengers’ calls. He decided to get out of the Waymo and walk the couple of blocks left to his home.

On Sunday, the Waymo app showed a notification to some customers saying the service for the Bay Area is paused, affecting at least seven cities.

“Our teams are working diligently and in close coordination with city officials, and we are hopeful to bring our services back online soon,” a Waymo spokesperson said in a statement on Sunday.

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Riva tried ordering another Waymo ride on Sunday before he saw the message.

“At the end of the day, I know it was an unpleasant situation for the other drivers, but I believe it really was all about safety – I believe it’s better safe than sorry,” Riva said. “I hope they will account for that in the future, because it’s truly a good service.”

Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk posted on X that his companies’ robotaxis – a direct competitor of Waymo – were “unaffected” by the power outage. BLOOMBERG