Elon Musk boasts of Tesla services as Waymo's driverless cars froze due to San Francisco power outage — What happened?

Around 17,000 customers in San Francisco were left without power even as San Francisco authorities restored electricity to most of the affected 1,30,000 homes late on 21 December, AP reported.

Notably, multiple citizens and drivers in San Francisco reported that Waymo's driverless vehicles froze in the middle of the streets, causing chaos and traffic, as the power outage affected traffic signals across the city. Billionaire Elon Musk took the chance to boast that Tesla's own driverless vehicles did not face similar disruptions despite the power cut.

The Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) said its crews worked on Sunday, to restore electricity in several neighborhoods and small areas of downtown San Francisco after the outage began on Saturday (20 December).

What caused the fire, when will full services be restored?

The outage is believed to have been caused after a fire outbreak at PG&E's substation at 8th and Mission streets, which caused sugnificant damage to infrastructure. Further investigation into the cause is ongoing, the report added.

The utility said it could not give a timeline for when power would be fully restored.

“The damage from the fire in our substation was significant and extensive, and the repairs and safe restoration will be complex,” it stated, adding that additional engineers and electricians have been dispatches to help with restoration efforts.

“This is a very complex work plan and will require the highest amount of safety focus to ensure safe work actions,” PG&E said.

San Francisco power outage: What happened?

• The AP report noted that so far, no injuries have been reported due to the outage in San Francisco.
• As per AP, the outage began a little after 1 pm on 20 December (Saturday) leaving majority of the city's northern part without power. Amid the worst of the situation, power was cut off for close to one-third of the utility’s customers in the Californian city.

• In a post on X (formerly Twitter), at around 4 pm on 20 December, PG&E said that the grid has been stabilised and it expects no further outages.
• In its own post on X, the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management said “significant transit disruptions” occurred citywide. It asked residents to avoid non-essential travel and treat down traffic signals as four-way stops.
• Exacerbating the traffic issues, driverless ride hailing vehicles by Alphabet-backed Waymo reportedly stopped dead on the streets due to the traffic light disruptions. The company had to suspend services. “Our teams are working diligently and in close coordination with city officials, and we are hopeful to bring our services back online soon,” a Waymo spokesperson said in a statement on 21 December.

Bad day to be riding a Waymo? Videos show traffic snarls, chaos

A number of Waymo’s driverless ride services froze mid-ride across the city after traffic lights went dark at major intersections. Social media was flooded with videos of multiple cars stopped in the middle of the street with their hazard lights flashing.

A rider Michele Riva (30) told Bloomberg he was on his way home in a Waymo car when the outage happened. His car stopped in front of a “very dense intersection” and non-working traffic lights without any notice when they were only a minute away from his destination, he added.

“I stayed in the Waymo for a couple of minutes, just to see. The problem was that, at the beginning, there were a lot of people crossing the streets because there were no traffic lights. So I believe the Waymo just didn’t know what to do,” he added.

Elon Musk takes chance to boast about Tesla FSD

Meanwhile, world's richest man and Tesla Inc.’s CEO Elon Musk took to his owned social media platform X, to boast that Waymo's rival, his robotaxis were “unaffected” by the power outage.

The official Tesla AI account on X also posted about the matter, along with a video of its vehicle driving through the power outage, with no visible issues. It stated: “FSD is trained on billions of real-world miles, including power outages”.

According to the Tesla website, “Tesla uses billions of miles of anonymous real-world driving data to train Full Self-Driving (Supervised)” and that it can be enabled to drive “almost anywhere with your active supervision, requiring minimal intervention”.

(With inputs from AP, Bloomberg)