Key facts
- Waymo temporarily paused its robotaxi service in San Francisco due to a power outage.
- The outage affected approximately 7,000 PG&E customers in the city.
- Waymo stated it was making temporary adjustments to monitor local conditions.
- The service pause lasted for about one hour.
- Waymo has since resumed its robotaxi operations in San Francisco.
Waymo has resumed its robotaxi service in San Francisco following a temporary pause of approximately one hour. The Alphabet-owned company cited a power outage impacting around 7,000 PG&E customers in the city as the reason for the interruption. During the pause, Waymo informed customers that service was temporarily halted and freeway routes were unavailable.
A Waymo spokesperson stated that the company was making temporary adjustments while monitoring local conditions and would return to normal operations as soon as possible. The decision to pause service was made to assess the scale of the outage and coordinate with local officials. This is not the first time power outages have affected Waymo's operations in San Francisco, with previous incidents occurring during a blackout in December and a fireworks show on the Fourth of July.
In response to such incidents, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has called for stricter state regulations to address the operation of autonomous vehicles during major events, whether planned or unplanned.