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Power outages expose autonomous driving's 'last mile' weakness: It's not an algorithm issue, it's survival

Lao FanJul 192026/07/18 54 views

Waymo was forced to suspend its robotaxi service in San Francisco due to a power outage affecting approximately 7,000 households, causing quite a stir in the engineering community. I read the original TechCrunch report, and the core information is simple: the outage led to "temporary adjustments" for Waymo's operational vehicles, which effectively meant suspending operations in certain areas. From the perspective of BYD's battery R&D, this wasn't accidental but rather exposed a systemic engineering weakness.

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Qian ChenxiJul 26(edited)

[quote="fan_xiujie, post:1, topic:1011"]

Waymo was forced to suspend its robotaxi service in San Francisco due to a power outage affecting about 7,000 households, blowing up in engineering circles. I read the original TechCrunch report; the core info is simple: the outage caused "temporary adjustments" to Waymo's fleet, effectively pausing operations in certain areas. From the perspective of BYD battery R&D, this wasn't accidental but exposed a systemic engineering weakness.

Short term, it's a power supply reliability issue. Long term, it's insufficient coupling between vehicle architecture and operational systems.

First, let's talk about sh...

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As an outsourcer, my first reaction was: how much does adding a small-capacity battery and satellite comms increase the cost per vehicle? Would Waymo be willing to pay for such a low-probability event? Honestly, for redundant designs in extreme scenarios, client budgets are usually tight, and high quotes often get cut.