Waymo suspended its robotaxi service in San Francisco Saturday afternoon, after a massive blackout appeared to leave many of its vehicles immobilized on city streets.
Lots of photos and videos posted on social media, the Waymo robotaxi stopped on streets and intersections as human drivers either stuck behind them or weaved around them.
Waymo said Saturday it temporarily suspended service in the city due to the blackout. Spokeswoman Suzanne Philion gave a similar statement to TechCrunch on Sunday morning.
“We have temporarily suspended our service in the San Francisco Bay Area due to the widespread power outage,” Philion said. “Our teams are working diligently and in close coordination with city officials to monitor infrastructure stability and hope to bring our services back online soon. We appreciate your patience and will provide further updates as they become available.”
The company did not provide an explanation for why the blackout had such a dramatic effect on its vehicles. One possible culprit: The blackout destroyed many of the city’s streetlights. (In fact, with the blackout affecting both the lights and Muni mass transit, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie warned residents to stay off the roads unless they needed to travel.)
Others thought Waymo might have been affected by an outage mobile phone service or traffic data.
The blackout appears to have been caused by a fire at a Pacific Gas & Electric substation in the city. SFGate reports that about 120,000 PG&E customers were affected by the blackout, and while the majority had power restored by late Saturday, 35,000 customers were still without power Sunday morning. PG&E’s website it also indicated that thousands of San Francisco customers were still affected at the time.
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A letter from Tiger Global Management leaked earlier this month said Waymo now provides 450,000 ride-hailing robots a week, nearly double what the Alphabet-owned company disclosed in the spring.
