A San Francisco power outage left Waymo's self-driving cars stranded at intersections

"The power outage was attributed to a fire at one of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E)'s substations. The incident began sometime on Saturday morning, which PG&E said affected approximately 130,000 customers. As of Sunday morning, the Californian power company said its crews have restored power to about 110,000 of those customers, while working on the remaining 21,000 customers in "the Presidio, Richmond District, Golden Gate Park and small areas of downtown San Francisco.""

"Waymo hasn't provided an explanation as to why the power outage left its autonomous cars stranded in San Francisco streets, but this episode may have revealed a notable fault with the Waymo Driver system. Waymo indicates on its website that its autonomous driving system "responds to signs and signals, like traffic light colors and temporary stop signs," which could indicate that the self-driving cars struggled with the out-of-order street lights."

Several Waymo autonomous vehicles became stranded at San Francisco intersections after a widespread power outage disabled traffic lights. Waymo suspended its ride-hailing services in the Bay Area and said teams are coordinating with city officials to restore service. The outage was caused by a fire at a PG&E substation and affected about 130,000 customers; crews restored power to roughly 110,000 by Sunday morning, with 21,000 remaining in specific neighborhoods. Waymo has not explained why vehicles were immobilized, though its Driver system relies on traffic signals, suggesting difficulty with out-of-order lights. Elon Musk said Tesla robotaxis were unaffected.

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