Waymo suspends service after power outage hit San Francisco

Waymo temporarily halted its San Francisco robotaxi service after a major blackout left multiple autonomous vehicles stranded on city streets.

Waymo temporarily halted its robotaxi service in San Francisco after a widespread blackout caused multiple autonomous vehicles to stall on city streets.

“We have temporarily suspended our ride-hailing services in the San Francisco Bay Area due to the widespread power outage,” a Waymo spokesperson told CNBC. “Our teams are working diligently and in close coordination with city officials, and we are hopeful to bring our services back online soon. We appreciate your patience and will provide further updates as soon as they are available.”

Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company owned by Alphabet (Google’s parent company).
It develops self-driving systems and operates robotaxi services using fully autonomous vehicles in select cities, including parts of the U.S., where riders can hail a car without a human driver.

Power outages in San Francisco caused several Waymo autonomous vehicles to stall in traffic, as shown in social media videos. The blackout began at 1:09 p.m., peaked two hours later, and affected about 130,000 customers. By Sunday morning, around 21,000 were still without power.

The blackout that hit San Francisco disabled traffic lights and possibly affected mobile networks or traffic data, forcing vehicles to stop. A fire at a Pacific Gas & Electric substation triggered the blackout. Most power was restored by late Saturday, but tens of thousands were still without electricity on Sunday morning.

On X, Tesla CEO Elon Musk highlighted the incident to promote Tesla’s robotaxis, saying they were not affected by the San Francisco power outage. Tesla and Waymo compete directly in autonomous ride-hailing but use different technologies.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Waymo)