Edge Case
December 22, 2025
Jay RameyWaymo's robotaxis blocked streets during the weekend's power outage in San Francisco, and plenty of questions remain.
The weekend power outage in San Francisco, which began around 1p.m. local time on Saturday and eventually affected 130,000 residents or about a third of the city well into Sunday, had one unexpected consequence: Waymo robotaxis stopped working, at times blocking traffic by themselves or in groups.
Residents took to social media to post photos of the traffic disarray seen in parts of the city, with at least one robotaxi spotted reportedly blocking a bus. A Waymo spokesperson addressed the event, but did not indicate just how many of its cars were taken offline in this manner.
“We have temporarily suspended our ride-hailing services given the broad power outage in San Francisco,” Waymo spokesperson Suzanne Philion told several San Francisco news outlets.
“While the failure of the utility infrastructure was significant, we are committed to ensuring our technology adjusts to traffic flow during such events,” Phillion added.
Waymo confirmed that the suspension of service was a decision made by the company rather than an unplanned event, restoring robotaxi service to the city only by Sunday evening.
Waymo is not the only robotaxi provider in San Francisco with Zoox also having launched far more limited operations in the city in November of this year. But the latter fleet did not appear to see disruptions caused by the outage.
The outage itself, which affected parts of the city into Sunday and Monday, was caused by a substation fire. San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie urged city residents to remain off the roads, indicating that police were deployed to help clear intersections.
It is worth noting that in cases of non-working traffic lights, the robotaxis are programmed to treat such intersections as four-way stops, as well as to recognize hand signals by police officers. This robotaxi behavior has certainly been tested before in real-life conditions with individual intersection lights, but perhaps not a third of the city when a big percentage of the 800-plus cars in the Waymo fleet are on the streets.
The outage raised questions regarding why the robotaxis were not programmed to return to their fleet bases in such circumstances, or find safe parking spots, even given the non-working traffic lights. The robotaxi operator also did not indicate if it lost all contact with any individual cars, as usually remote Waymo human monitors can access visual and other sensor feeds from the Jaguar I-Pace robotaxis and input manual route corrections.
Among other things, the event highlighted the interconnected nature of power and communications networks in large cities experiencing widespread outages due to grid failures. As of Monday morning, not all power has been restored to all neighborhoods, with utility workers continuing to address grid issues.
While this power outage was traced to an isolated failure, more potential disruptions could be in store for northern California later this week, with PG&E already working to respond to potential losses of power with thousands of utility workers.
“The storms are forecast to move through the PG&E’s service area with the first system arriving on Tuesday followed by the second system later in the day on Wednesday. They could result in widespread outage activity,” the utility company said. “PG&E’s in-house meteorologist says parts of the North Coast could see from four to 10 inches of rain. Snow levels are expected to be above 6,000 feet.”
Until last weekend, one of the bigger fleet-wide challenges to robotaxi operations were thought to be weather conditions, which is why Waymo had not begun planning for operations in cities with occasional or snow until recently. But perhaps not enough attention has been paid to robotaxi operations in cases of natural or other disasters that could upset electric and communications infrastructure.
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