Waymo is resuming its driverless taxi service after a large blackout across San Francisco stranded its cars in the streets Saturday night.
Videos shared on social media showed the self-driving cars blocking roads and intersections as a widespread power outage left a large part of the city in the dark. In a video on X, one of the Waymo vehicles appeared stuck at an intersection, with four other Waymo cars and flashing hazard lights blocking the road behind it.
Cars with human drivers were forced to navigate between vehicles in a narrow section of the street.
The issue spurred a suspension of Waymo's service Saturday, but the company returned to offering rides once power was up the next day, CNBC reported.
"While the Waymo Driver 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,” a spokesperson told CNBC. “This contributed to traffic friction during the height of the congestion.”
Waymo said in a statement that the blackout caused disruptions, including “non-functioning traffic signals.” It added that it closely coordinated with San Francisco city officials throughout the blackout.
"We are focused on rapidly integrating the lessons learned from this event, and are committed to earning and maintaining the trust of the communities we serve every day," the statement said.
The outage is believed to have been caused by a fire at a Pacific Gas and Electric Co. substation, according to the utility. The outage, which began Saturday afternoon, affected about 130,000 homes and businesses at its peak.
About 4,700 customers remain without power Monday with the hope of having their electricity restored within a few hours, Chief Operating Officer Sumeet Singh said Monday.
“I would like to stress that the damage from the fire in our substation has been significant and extensive, requiring complex, safety-focused repairs,” Singh said. “Naturally, the fire had to be addressed before we could start the restoration process.”
The root cause of the fire is under investigation, and PG&E has hired a third-party engineering firm to conduct an evaluation, Singh said. Preventive maintenance was conducted at that substation in October, and it passed inspection as recently as Dec. 5, Singh told reporters.
San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management said there were “significant transit disruptions” citywide Saturday and encouraged residents to avoid travel if they could. Some of the city’s Bay Area Rapid Transit and Muni bus stations were bypassed because of the outages, The Associated Press reported.
Waymo, which is owned by Google parent company Alphabet, initially its service in the Bay Area and plans to expand to major metropolitan areas across the country, including Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Miami.
It opened up its service last year in Los Angeles County, one of its biggest markets to date. The company also received a permit in August to conduct test rides in New York City with a limited number of cars.
Major companies are competing in the autonomous ride business, with technology titans such as Tesla and Amazon testing out their own services to rival Waymo.
Cruise, a startup owned by General Motors, had its permits revoked in 2023 because of safety concerns. One of its cars dragged a pedestrian for 20 feet while she was pinned underneath it in October that year.
The incident sparked a recall of nearly 1,000 of Cruise's vehicles and a federal probe into the safety of the company's robotaxi program. Cruise did not relaunch, and GM announced in December 2024 that it would no longer pursue driverless "robotaxi" services.
