Waymos San Francisco outage raises doubts over robotaxi readiness during crises

Experts demand regulation of remote operations for robotaxi

Waymo says fleet-wide updates are being implemented to improve the process

California regulators say they’re investigating the incident

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 27 (Reuters) – A widespread power outage in San Francisco that caused a Waymo robotaxis to stop and scramble traffic earlier this month has raised concerns about whether autonomous vehicle operators are prepared to deal with major emergencies such as earthquakes and floods.

Driverless taxis from Alphabet unit Waymo, ubiquitous on city streets, were stranded at intersections with their hazard lights on as traffic lights stopped working following a Dec. 20 fire at a PG&E substation that knocked out power to about a third of the city, according to videos posted on social media. Waymo ceased operations and resumed a day later.

The incident renewed calls for tighter regulation of the nascent but fast-growing industry, as Tesla and other companies, including Amazon’s Zoox, race to expand robotaxi services in many cities.

“If you get the wrong response to an outage, regulators are left derelict if they don’t respond by demanding some kind of evidence that the earthquake scenario will be handled properly,” said Philip Koopman, a computer engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University and an expert on autonomous technology.

In a statement Tuesday, Waymo said its robot axes are designed to treat non-operational traffic signals as four-way stops, but occasionally require a confirmation check. Although vehicles successfully passed more than 7,000 darkened signals on Saturday, “the outage created a massive surge in approval requests,” which “led to response delays that contributed to traffic congestion on already overcrowded streets,” Waymo said.

Robotaxi operators around the world use varying degrees of human remote access, known in the industry as “teleoperation,” to monitor and control vehicles. Waymo, for example, has a team of human “fleet response” agents who respond to questions from its robot, the Waymo Driver, when it encounters a particular situation.

But such remote assistance has limitations, and Missy Cummings, director of the Center for Autonomy and Robotics at George Mason University and a former adviser to the US road safety regulator, said the Waymo outage highlights the need to regulate how robotaxi operators use the technology.

“The whole point of having remote operations is to have people there when the system is not responding the way it should,” he said. “The federal government needs to regulate remote operations,” Cummings said. “They need to make sure they have backup remote operations in place if some kind of catastrophic failure occurs.”

The California Department of Motor Vehicles and the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulate and permit the testing and commercial deployment of robotaxis, said they were investigating the incident.

The DMV said it is consulting with Waymo and other autonomous vehicle manufacturers about actions related to emergency response. It also said it was drafting regulations to ensure remote drivers “meet high standards of safety, accountability and responsiveness.”

Deploying and commercializing fully autonomous vehicles has been more difficult than expected due to high investments to ensure the technology is safe and public outcry after crashes that forced many people to close up shop.

Following a notable accident in 2023 in which a robotaxi owned by General Motors’ Cruise dragged a pedestrian, regulators revoked this permit, eventually leading the company to cease operations.

But robotaxis are back on the agenda after Tesla launched its service in Austin, Texas, earlier this year and CEO Elon Musk promised rapid expansion. Waymo, which has grown slowly and steadily over the years since launching as Google’s self-driving project in 2009, has also accelerated expansion.

Waymo operates in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Metro Phoenix, Austin and Atlanta with a fleet of more than 2,500 vehicles.

The company said the approval processes its tools follow were established during early deployment and are currently refining them to fit its current scale. Waymo is implementing fleet-wide updates to vehicles that “provide specific power outage context and allow them to navigate more decisively.”

Both Cummings and Koopman said robotaxi operators should face additional permitting requirements once their fleets grow beyond a certain size to ensure they have enough capacity to handle large-scale failures.

“If this were an earthquake, it would be a problem,” Koopman said. “This is just a shot across the bow.” (Reporting by Abhirup Roy in San Francisco; Editing by Sayantani Ghosh and Alistair Bell)