Waymo says its robotaxi service has resumed after making “temporary adjustments” in San Francisco amid a power outage that appears to affected about 7,000 PG&E customers in the city.
According to the screenshot posted on social networksWaymo told SF customers that service is “temporarily suspended” and that “freeway routes are unavailable.”
When TechCrunch reached out to the Alphabet-owned company for comment, a spokesperson said in a statement: “We’re making temporary adjustments to our service while we monitor local conditions. We know riders are depending on us, and we’ll get back to normal as soon as possible.”
After this article was originally published, a Waymo spokesperson added that the company “decided to suspend service for approximately one hour to assess the extent of the power outage affecting much of San Francisco and to coordinate with local authorities.”
Power outages have affected Waymo services in the past, such as when a number of Waymo vehicles stuck on the city streets during a blackout in Decemberand when a similar incident paralyzed traffic during fireworks on the Golden Gate Bridge on the Fourth of July.
As a result, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie demanded the tightening of state regulation to “adequately consider how autonomous vehicles perform during major incidents, whether planned or not.”
This post has been updated with additional comments from Waymo indicating that service has resumed.
