this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2025
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416
A San Francisco power outage left Waymo's self-driving cars stranded at intersections (www.engadget.com)
submitted 4 months ago by tonytins@pawb.social to c/technology@lemmy.world
67 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Several of Waymo's autonomous vehicles were seen stuck in the middle of San Francisco streets following a significant power outage that took out the city's traffic lights. Waymo responded to the power outage by suspending its ride-hailing services in the city, but images and videos on social media showed the self-driving taxis stopped at intersections with hazard lights on.

"We have temporarily suspended our ride-hailing services in the San Francisco Bay Area due to the widespread power outage," Suzanne Philion, a spokesperson for Waymo, told Engadget in an email. "Our teams are working diligently and in close coordination with city officials, and we are hopeful to bring our services back online soon."

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[–] fuzzywombat@lemmy.world 133 points 4 months ago (27 children)

This is really bad. You need to have emergency service vehicles able to move around the city. Blocking road like that could mean life or death for some. Public road isn't some playground for doing beta testing. Waymo needs to be heavily fined for putting public at risk.

[–] unphazed@lemmy.world 16 points 4 months ago (9 children)

Police and firefighters would love to have an excuse to go demolition derby on these things I bet.

[–] naticus@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago (8 children)

They'd probably love to, but wouldn't. Lithium fires could make a bigger problem than slowly going around them.

[–] unphazed@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Waymo didn't switch to Sodium? I would have thought they'd use the newer batteries to save money.

[–] naticus@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

Afaik, no they haven't. Everything I've seen said they're on lithium.

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