A weekend power outage in San Francisco left multiple Waymo robotaxis stalled in intersections and causing gridlock after traffic lights in the city’s downtown area stopped functioning.
Videos of the immobile vehicles quickly went viral, adding to a growing list of incidents where the self-driving cars struggle with unexpected disruptions.
The outage also renewed debate about whether AI-powered transportation is ready for real-world conditions, especially after Tesla CEO Elon Musk pointed out that Tesla’s robotaxis appeared unaffected.
Waymo robotaxis stop cold at San Francisco intersections
A massive power outage on Saturday cut off the city’s traffic lights, as well as Waymos from their network of maps, cameras, light sensors, and other traffic devices, leaving the cars stopped at intersections with their dome lights flashing.
One San Francisco resident filmed no less than five Waymos stuck at one non-functioning light.
One in particular sat in front of the crosswalk, partway into the intersection.
“Someone’s gonna set this thing on fire if it doesn’t move soon,” the person filming remarked.
Behind the crosswalk, three more Waymos sat stalled across three lanes, leaving only one open for driver-operated vehicles to get through. Another robotaxi languished behind the group.
X user @MyLordBebo reposted the footage to the tune of 1.1 million views so far.
“Power outage in San Francisco made all autonomous cars just stop where they are,” the user said. “They can’t do anything. Crazy.”
Unfortunately for Musk haters, that was not true—unless you agree with the judge who recently ruled that it’s misleading to call the Tesla robotaxis “autonomous.”
Regardless, these vehicles, which rely on AI to navigate, did appear to function normally through the outage. The AI causes its own issues on a regular basis, but we have to say that Musk’s tweet about this particular incident was correct.
“Tesla Robotaxis were unaffected by the SF power outage,” he tweeted on Sunday.
“More power outages are coming”
While robotaxi companies push the idea that their cars are safer than those operated by humans alone, many take issue with tech billionaires experimenting on the streets in which they drive, walk, and live. As a result, every incident like this draws mass criticism, especially among those who have to deal with it directly.
With AI data centers putting a strain on the power grid and climate change stressing the infrastructure, many predicted that this will only get worse.
“This is going to be so fun as we enter an era where every basic resource, including electricity, will become scarce,” wrote @never_oppressed. “In no small part because of the strain that big tech has imposed on the planet. Really elegantly ironic.”
“The more you centralize the bigger the catastrophe will be,” @TechnoBarbarism warned. “Extrapolate this out 20 years when everything is running off cloud-based AI and theres an outage in service or power.”
“More power outages are coming. They will be a regular occurrence in America,” said @FORTRESSMAXXING. “The US powergrid is already overburdened as it is, with every new Data Center being built expect the powergrid to sh*t itself more and more.”
It’s bad enough that even some tech-friendly folks are calling for the experiment to end.
“I’m convinced that tech will never get good enough in our lifetimes to condense the absurd amount of compute you need for self-driving in any single car,” wrote @Lyserberg.
“Frankly, I’m not even sure it’s an engineering challenge worth solving. Put the clanker cars out to pasture.”
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