- A power outage in San Francisco has wreaked havoc on Waymo’s robotaxi fleet.
- Many videos and photos on social media show driverless taxis stuck at intersections.
- The problem got so bad that Waymo temporarily suspended its robot service in the Bay Area.
A Waymo robot car froze this weekend in San Francisco after a power outage left nearly 130,000 residents without electricity. A power outage caused street lights and traffic lights to go dark, and Waymo’s self-driving Jaguar I-Pace EV appears to have had a very difficult time coping with it all.
Many videos and photos posted on social media show white robotaxis sitting still at intersections, with their warning lights on, seemingly unsure how to cross areas that previously had working street lights.
A Waymo spokesperson said Edge The company temporarily suspended passenger services in the San Francisco Bay Area, as it was trying to maintain passenger safety and ensure clear access for emergency personnel.
On Sunday evening, the company resumed operations after Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) reported service had been restored to about 114,000 affected customers. The electricity operator added that it is continuing repairs after a fire at a five-story power substation in the city.
“We are resuming passenger service in the San Francisco Bay Area. Yesterday’s power outage was a widespread event that caused gridlock across San Francisco, with downed traffic signals and disruption to transportation. Although the utility infrastructure failure was significant, we are committed to ensuring our technology adapts to traffic flow during such events,” Waymo said in a statement.
Despite Waymo’s communications, the company has not revealed why its robotaxis froze after a power outage in San Francisco. RTA vehicles rely on pre-set data, as well as information from numerous sensors that provide real-time data to help navigate difficult conditions. In a Blog post Since last year, Waymo has said its cars will communicate with human fleet response agents if they encounter unusual situations.
While self-driving taxis wait for input from the fleet response, they can still decide to act on their own using whatever information they have. However, with the power outages, many people likely started using cellular data instead of Wi-Fi, straining networks and making data transfer more difficult.
This is important because Waymo’s human assistants can view real-time feeds from the car’s exterior cameras and a 3D representation of the car’s surroundings. They can also run back the feeds to better understand what caused the blockage in the first place. All of this requires a large amount of bandwidth for multiple vehicles simultaneously.
Whatever the reason, it was the perfect storm for Waymo, and comes at a time when the robotaxi war is heating up in the US. Elon Musk, Tesla CEO and a big proponent of self-driving cars, has taken advantage of this situation Posting on X Tesla Robotaxis was not affected by the power outage in San Francisco.
