Waymo has suspended its driverless taxi service in the San Francisco Bay Area following city-wide blackouts.
A Waymo spokesperson told CNBC that its teams are working with city officials to bring its services back online.
“We have temporarily suspended our ride-hailing services in the San Francisco Bay Area due to the widespread power outage,” they said.
“We appreciate your patience and will provide further updates as soon as they are available.”
Multiple social media videos showed the Alphabet-owned videos blocking traffic during the power outage, which left 125,000 homes in the dark.
The Waymo vehicles began to have trouble navigating the streets without functioning traffic lights, causing them to stop.
The cars also use an “advanced suite of car sensors” with AI to help the car “decipher what’s around it”.
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said that power is expected to come back within the next day.
Elon Musk posted to X that “Tesla Robotaxis were unaffected by the SF power outage”, despite Tesla not offering driverless taxi services in the city.
Tesla’s services in San Francisco require a human driver behind the wheel at all times, as Tesla has yet to obtain permits to conduct driverless testing or services in the state without human safety supervision.
This comes as Waymo dominates the driverless taxi industry, and a survey from the American Automobile Association earlier this year found that two-thirds of U.S. drivers said they were fearful of autonomous cars.
