Key Points
- Waymo suspended its driverless taxi service in San Francisco due to blackouts.
- A substation fire left 130,000 customers without power and disabled traffic signals.
- Stalled Waymo vehicles blocked traffic as they were unable to navigate the outage.
- Elon Musk claimed Tesla was unaffected, but Tesla still uses human safety drivers.
Waymo had to pull its driverless cars off the streets of San Francisco this weekend. The company suspended its ride-hailing service on Saturday afternoon after a massive power outage hit the city. A fire at a PG&E substation caused the blackout, initially leaving about 130,000 people without electricity and causing widespread disruption.
The outage didn’t just turn off the lights in homes; it seemed to confuse the self-driving cars. Residents across the city posted videos and photos on social media showing Waymo vehicles just sitting in the middle of busy roads.
One resident reported seeing at least three cars completely stalled in traffic, including one blocking a lane on Turk Boulevard. Because these cars operate without human drivers, they became large obstacles when they couldn’t navigate the darkened streets.
While San Francisco dealt with gridlock, Elon Musk took to social media to boast. He claimed that Tesla Robotaxis were “unaffected” by the power failure. However, he omitted a key detail: Tesla does not yet operate a fully driverless service in San Francisco. Their cars still have human safety drivers behind the wheel who can take over if the power goes out or a sensor fails. Waymo, by contrast, operates entirely without people in the front seat, which is why the cars simply stopped moving.
Experts say this incident is a major wake-up call for the industry. Bryan Reimer, a researcher at MIT, noted that power outages are a normal and predictable part of city life. He argued that if a self-driving car can’t handle a blackout without causing “chaos gridlock,” then the technology isn’t as robust as people think. He suggested that cities might need to limit the number of these cars on the road until companies develop better backup plans.
Waymo says its teams are working closely with city officials to restore service. The company has not yet said exactly when the cars will return to the streets.
