Waymo says San Francisco service has resumed after one-hour pause

Waymo temporarily halted its robotaxi service across San Francisco for about an hour on July 18 after a power outage knocked out electricity for roughly 7,000 PG&E customers in the city, before resuming operations once the scale of the disruption became clearer.

Why the company paused service

Waymo said it made the decision to pause "to assess the scale of the power outage affecting a large portion of San Francisco and coordinate with local officials," rather than continuing to operate its fleet through an active grid disruption with unclear boundaries. During the pause, freeway routes became inaccessible to Waymo vehicles, further limiting where the service could operate even for riders willing to wait.

Who was affected

The outage itself, attributed to PG&E, hit around 7,000 customers across San Francisco, a large enough footprint that Waymo judged it safer to stand down entirely rather than attempt to route around affected areas in real time. Riders and residents relying on the robotaxi service found themselves without rides for the duration of the pause.

Not the company's first outage-related stoppage

This is not the first time a power outage has disrupted Waymo's San Francisco operations. The company's vehicles previously stalled during a December blackout, and traffic around its fleet became paralysed during Fourth of July fireworks celebrations, incidents that together paint a picture of a service still working out how to handle infrastructure disruptions that go beyond normal traffic conditions.

The mayor wants tighter rules

The repeated incidents have drawn a response from San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, who has called for stricter state regulations governing how autonomous vehicle operators like Waymo behave during emergencies. The push suggests city officials see a pattern worth addressing at the regulatory level rather than treating each outage as an isolated one-off.

A recurring test for autonomous fleets

Power outages present a particular challenge for autonomous vehicle operators because traffic signals, street lighting and communication infrastructure can all be affected simultaneously, conditions that differ meaningfully from the scenarios self-driving systems are typically trained and tested against. Waymo's decision to pause rather than continue operating reflects a cautious approach, but the mayor's call for firmer rules suggests city officials do not want that caution left purely to the company's discretion.

What resumption looked like

Service resumed roughly an hour after the pause began, once Waymo and local officials had a clearer picture of the outage's scope. The company has not indicated any changes to its outage response protocol following this latest incident, though the mayor's regulatory push suggests that could change if similar disruptions keep recurring.

With San Francisco's power grid having now disrupted Waymo's service on at least three separate occasions in recent months, the pressure is shifting from the company's own judgment calls toward the kind of formal state-level rules Mayor Lurie is pushing for, rules that would apply not just to Waymo but to any autonomous fleet operating in the city going forward.

For riders, the pattern is becoming familiar enough that a sudden Waymo outage during a power event is no longer a total surprise, but it still leaves them scrambling for alternative transport at exactly the moment when traffic signals are down and roads are hardest to navigate safely in the first place.