Alphabet-owned Waymo has resumed its driverless ride-hail work successful the San Francisco Bay Area aft a impermanent intermission during blackouts that plagued the metropolis opening connected Saturday afternoon.
"Yesterday's powerfulness outage was a wide lawsuit that caused gridlock crossed San Francisco, with non-functioning postulation signals and transit disruptions," a Waymo spokesperson, Suzanne Philion, told CNBC successful an e-mailed connection Sunday afternoon.
"While the nonaccomplishment of the inferior infrastructure was significant, we are committed to ensuring our exertion adjusts to postulation travel during specified events," she added.
Waymo announcement of work outage successful San Francisco.
Source: Waymo
As powerfulness outages dispersed yesterday, videos shared connected societal media appeared to amusement aggregate Waymo vehicles stalled successful postulation successful antithetic parts of the city.
San Francisco nonmigratory Matt Schoolfield said helium saw astatine slightest 3 Waymo autonomous vehicles stopped successful postulation Saturday astir 9:45 p.m. section time, including 1 helium photographed on Turk Boulevard adjacent Parker Avenue.
"They were conscionable stopping successful the mediate of the street," Schoolfield said.
A Waymo conveyance stuck betwixt Parker and Beaumont, connected the northbound broadside of Turk Boulevard successful San Francisco.
Credit: Matt Schoolfield
The powerfulness outages began astir 1:09 p.m. Saturday and peaked astir 2 hours later, affecting astir 130,000 customers, according to Pacific Gas and Electric. As of Sunday morning, astir 21,000 customers remained without power, chiefly successful the Presidio, the Richmond District, Golden Gate Park and parts of downtown San Francisco.
PG&E said the outage was caused by a occurrence astatine a substation that resulted successful "significant and extensive" damage, and said it could not yet supply a precise timeline for afloat restoration.
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said successful a 9 p.m. update connected X that constabulary officers, occurrence crews, parking power officers and metropolis ambassadors were deployed crossed affected neighborhoods.
Waymo's Philion besides told CNBC that "While the Waymo Driver is designed to dainty non-functional signals arsenic four-way stops, the sheer standard of the outage led to instances wherever vehicles remained stationary longer than accustomed to corroborate the authorities of the affected intersections. This contributed to postulation friction during the tallness of the congestion."
Waymo "closely coordinated with San Francisco metropolis officials," she said, and proactively paused its work arsenic of Saturday evening and successful the archetypal fractional of the time connected Sunday.
"The bulk of progressive trips were successfully completed earlier vehicles were safely returned to depots oregon pulled over," she noted.
Amid the disruption, Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted connected X: "Tesla Robotaxis were unaffected by the SF powerfulness outage."
Unlike Waymo, Tesla does not run a driverless robotaxi work successful San Francisco.
Tesla's section ride-hailing work uses vehicles equipped with "FSD (Supervised)," a premium operator assistance system. The work requires a quality operator down the instrumentality astatine each times.
According to authorities regulators — including the California Department of Motor Vehicles and California Public Utilities Commission — Tesla has not obtained permits to behaviour driverless investigating oregon services successful the authorities without quality information supervisors down the wheel, acceptable to steer oregon brake astatine immoderate time.
Tesla is vying to go a robotaxi titan, but does not yet run commercial, driverless services. Tesla's Robotaxi app allows users to hail a ride; however, its vehicles presently person quality information supervisors oregon drivers connected board, adjacent successful states wherever the institution has obtained permits for driverless operations.
Waymo, which leads the nascent manufacture successful the West, is Tesla's main rival successful AVs, on with Chinese players similar Baidu-owned Apollo Go.
The outage-related disruptions successful San Francisco travel arsenic robotaxi services are becoming much communal successful different large U.S. cities. Waymo is among a tiny fig of companies operating afloat driverless ride-hailing services for the public, adjacent arsenic unease astir autonomous vehicles remains high.
A survey by the American Automobile Association earlier this twelvemonth recovered that astir two-thirds of U.S. drivers said they were fearful of autonomous vehicles.
The Waymo intermission successful San Francisco indicates cities are not yet acceptable for highly automated vehicles to inundate their streets, said Bryan Reimer, a probe idiosyncratic astatine the MIT Center for Transportation and co-author of "How to Make AI Useful."
"Something successful the plan and improvement of this exertion was missed that intelligibly illustrates it was not the robust solution galore would similar to judge it is," helium said.
Reimer noted that powerfulness outages are wholly predictable. "Not for eternity, but successful the foreseeable future, we volition request to premix quality and instrumentality intelligence, and person quality backup systems successful spot astir highly automated systems, including robotaxis," helium said.
State and metropolis regulators volition request to see what the maximum penetration of highly automated vehicles should beryllium successful their region, Reimer added, and AV developers should beryllium held liable for "chaos gridlock," conscionable arsenic quality drivers would beryllium held liable for however they thrust during a blackout.
Waymo did not accidental erstwhile its work would resume and did not specify whether collisions involving its vehicles had occurred during the blackout.
— CNBC's Riya Bhattacharjee contributed reporting.
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