Frozen Waymos backed up San Francisco traffic during a widespread power outage

AI Summary1 min read

TL;DR

A power outage in San Francisco caused Waymo's driverless cars to stop, creating traffic jams as they couldn't detect traffic lights. In contrast, Tesla's FSD vehicles navigated unaffected, with Elon Musk highlighting the difference.

Two Waymo cars sit motionless in a San Francisco street on the evening, among darkened buildings during the power outage. — Waymo driverless car is not able to detect traffic lights after a major power outage in San Francisco, California, | Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images

A power outage struck San Francisco on Saturday that blacked out about 130,000 customers at its peak, according to Pacific Gas and Electric Company, but also caused another problem: stranded Waymo vehicles. Posts all over social media showed the company's autonomous SUVs sitting still in the streets and causing traffic jams.

Some people posted videos of Teslas using their FSD feature to navigate the same streets, and Elon Musk tweeted that "Tesla Robotaxis were unaffected by the SF power outage."

Power out in SF and the @Waymo's are causing a MASSIVE jam in North Beach ðŸ¤£ pic.twitter.com/fuvhprlyma
- Iago Maciel (@_iagomaciel) December 2 …

Read the full story at The Verge.