Additional Coverage:
Robotaxis Hit the Brakes as San Francisco Blackout Causes Gridlock
San Francisco, CA – Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving car company, temporarily suspended its robotaxi service in the San Francisco Bay Area this past weekend after widespread power outages caused significant disruptions and left some of its autonomous vehicles stranded in traffic. The service resumed Sunday evening as power was gradually restored across the city.
The massive power outage, which began Saturday afternoon and impacted approximately 130,000 customers at its peak, was attributed by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) to a fire at a substation. The incident caused “significant and extensive” damage, leaving parts of the city, including the Presidio and Richmond District, without power well into Sunday morning.
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie confirmed via a post on X that police officers, fire crews, parking control officers, and city ambassadors were deployed across affected neighborhoods to help manage the resulting gridlock and aid in the resumption of transit services.
Waymo spokesperson Suzanne Philion stated that the company “proactively” initiated a temporary suspension of its service Saturday evening and Sunday morning, working closely with city officials throughout the event. “Yesterday’s power outage was a widespread event that caused gridlock across San Francisco, with non-functioning traffic signals and transit disruptions,” Philion told CNBC in an email. “While the failure of the utility infrastructure was significant, we are committed to ensuring our technology adjusts to traffic flow during such events.”
Despite the company’s efforts, videos circulating on social media showed multiple Waymo vehicles stalled in traffic. Local resident Matt Schoolfield reported seeing at least three Waymo autonomous vehicles stopped in traffic Saturday around 9:45 p.m., including one on Turk Boulevard near Parker Avenue. “They were just stopping in the middle of the street,” Schoolfield recounted.
Philion explained that while the Waymo Driver system is designed to treat non-functional signals as four-way stops, “the sheer scale of the outage led to instances where vehicles remained stationary longer than usual to confirm the state of the affected intersections. This contributed to traffic friction during the height of the congestion.” She added that the majority of active trips were successfully completed before vehicles were safely returned to depots or pulled over.
This incident highlights ongoing concerns about the integration of highly automated vehicles into urban environments, particularly during unforeseen widespread events. Bryan Reimer, a research scientist at the MIT Center for Transportation, commented, “Something in the design and development of this technology was missed that clearly illustrates it was not the robust solution many would like to believe it is.” He emphasized the predictability of power outages and the necessity of human backup systems alongside highly automated systems.
Reimer suggested that state and city regulators must consider the maximum penetration of automated vehicles in their regions and hold AV developers accountable for “chaos gridlock” in a similar manner to human drivers during a blackout.
It’s worth noting that Tesla, while vying to become a robotaxi titan, does not operate a fully driverless robotaxi service in San Francisco. Their “FSD (Supervised)” system requires a human driver behind the wheel at all times and the company has not obtained permits for driverless operations in California.
The Waymo pause comes at a time when public unease about autonomous vehicles remains high, with a recent American Automobile Association survey indicating that roughly two-thirds of U.S. drivers express fear of them. As robotaxi services become more prevalent in major U.S. cities, the San Francisco blackout serves as a crucial reminder of the complexities and challenges involved in deploying this cutting-edge technology.