Blackout in San Francisco Litters Streets with Visitors-Blocking, Deactivated Waymos

There was an influence outage in San Francisco on Saturday, initially leaving 124,000 of 414,000 clients—about 30%—at the hours of darkness. It additionally induced a widespread Waymo meltdown, with apparently all energetic Waymo robotaxis within the affected elements of the town caught in robotic comas, blocking intersections and choking site visitors on some streets.

Energy outage took out the waymos RIP pic.twitter.com/DPte8oOGku

— Vincent Woo (@fulligin) December 21, 2025

Waymo spokesperson Suzanne Philion issued a statement at roughly 7:00 p.m., saying service had been “quickly suspended” because of the outage. “We’re targeted on holding our riders protected and making certain emergency personnel have the clear entry they should do their work,” Philion stated.

6 Waymo’s parked at a damaged site visitors gentle blocking the roads. Looks like they weren’t skilled for an influence outage pic.twitter.com/9fBkoxgKwe

— Walden (@walden_yan) December 21, 2025

As of Sunday morning there wasn’t but an replace from Waymo on whether or not the corporate’s robotaxis had been nonetheless out of fee, nor on what had induced the issue within the first place.

Gizmodo requested Waymo if the automobiles had hassle traversing blacked-out stoplights, or if the problem had one thing to do with knowledge reception or transmission. We additionally requested the corporate if any Waymo automobiles had been nonetheless blocking the streets. We are going to replace if we hear again. (Replace: Waymo supplied a press release, which has been appended to the tip of this text)

Till there’s some form of postmortem from the Alphabet-owned firm, there’s no technique to be completely positive that the issue wasn’t an Anakin Skywalker-type state of affairs, through which the nerve heart of the robotic hive was destroyed by a 9-year-old, inflicting all of the robots to drop useless.

Firms like Waymo maintain themselves up as harbingers of a safer future on the roads, touting statistics like 82% fewer crashes through which an airbag deployed, and 92% fewer pedestrian collisions with accidents when in comparison with human drivers. 

Energy out in SF and the @Waymo’s are inflicting a MASSIVE jam in North Seashore 🤣 pic.twitter.com/fuvhprlyma

— Iago Maciel (@_iagomaciel) December 21, 2025

Useless waymos throughout SF blocking roads resulting from energy outage 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/CAsSxFroX3

— @jason (@Jason) December 21, 2025

However, like when a San Francisco Waymo fatally ran over a regionally well-known cat named Package Kat in October, the problem could also be much less about Waymos being higher or worse than people in combination than the truth that robots fail in unpredictable, alien methods. The actual footage of Kit Kat’s fatal injury reveals one such instance. A human driver most likely wouldn’t do what appears to occur within the video: begin from a useless cease whereas an individual is actively attempting to coax a cat out from beneath their automobile.

Equally, human drivers have a tendency to not all of a sudden go offline en masse when there’s a blackout.

Up to date at 7:12 p.m. ET. A Waymo spokesperson supplied the next assertion:

“We’re resuming ride-hailing service within the San Francisco Bay Space. Yesterday’s energy outage was a widespread occasion that induced gridlock throughout San Francisco, with non-functioning site visitors alerts and transit disruptions. Whereas the failure of the utility infrastructure was vital, we’re dedicated to making sure our know-how adjusts to site visitors stream throughout such occasions.

“All through the outage, we carefully coordinated with San Francisco metropolis officers. We’re targeted on quickly integrating the teachings realized from this occasion, and are dedicated to incomes and sustaining the belief of the communities we serve each day.”

A parenthetical has additionally been added above indicating that Waymo replied to Gizmodo.