Frozen Waymos backed up San Francisco traffic during a widespread power outage
A power outage hit San Francisco on Saturday that left about 130,000 customers without power at its peak, according to Pacific Gas and Electric Company, but also caused another problem: stranded Waymo vehicles. Posts all over social media showed the company’s self-driving SUVs standing still on the streets and causing traffic jams.
Some people posted videos of Tesla using their FSD feature to navigate the same streets, and Elon Musk tweeted that “Tesla robotaxis were unaffected by the SF power outage.”
In response to a request for The edgeWaymo spokeswoman Suzanne Philion sent a statement saying, “We have temporarily suspended our rideshare services due to the widespread power outage in San Francisco. We are working to keep our riders safe and ensure emergency personnel have the clear access they need to do their jobs.” PG&E reported as of 7 a.m. PT that “crews have restored approximately 110,000 customers and PG&E continues to work to restore the remaining 21,000 customers, primarily in the Presidio, Richmond District, Golden Gate Park and small areas of downtown San Francisco,” while continuing repairs after a fire at a five-story electrical substation.
Exactly why the cars weren’t moving remains unclear, with no public updates that we could find on the company’s social media channels, but speculation centered around spotty wireless data connections, with cell towers down or overloaded by people who no longer had access to Wi-Fi, and/or street lights that didn’t work without power.
These problems have happened before, however, as seen in TikTok videos from earlier this year showing Waymos frozen by a faulty streetlight and during a power outage in Austin, Texas. In a response to a Reddit post showing another similar situation last year, someone claiming to be a former employee commented explaining that the vehicle would send a request to a remote assistant and wait for their response before continuing.
According to a company blog post, it contacts a human response agent when the car encounters “unique interactions,” providing it with live and recorded views from its cameras in addition to a 3D map of what the sensors are picking up. However, these may require bandwidth that is difficult to find during a significant power outage. I couldn’t find any statistics on how many remote assistance operators Waymo has at any given time, but in November the company announced that it had passed a third-party audit by Tüv Süd, a German technical inspection company that evaluated its remote assistance program against industry best practices.
