Waymo resumes its robotaxi service in SF after suspending it during a blackout, and says most trips finished before vehicles returned to depots or pulled over

Alphabet-owned Waymo has resumed its driverless ride-hail service in the San Francisco Bay Area after a temporary pause during blackouts …

CNBC 2025-12-22

Context & Ripple Effects

Waymo’s Bay Area service has moved from restricted access to broad public availability, while its driverless freeway rollout extended the operating environment beyond city streets. That expansion makes continuity during city infrastructure failures a central test of the service, not an edge case.

The blackout pause followed traffic-signal outages that left some vehicles stopped, and the subsequent return offers an early view of the fleet’s fallback behavior: trips could be completed in many cases before vehicles safely exited service.

First-order effects

Waymo riders in the San Francisco Bay Area regain access to the driverless ride-hail service after the temporary safety pause.
Waymo’s fleet can return from blackout procedures after completing or winding down active trips, rather than treating every outage-affected ride as an immediate cancellation.

Second-order effects

The incident puts operational pressure on Waymo to make outage detection, routing and depot or pull-over decisions reliable enough to limit service interruptions; the company later described navigation updates for widespread outages.
For riders and local regulators, service reliability will be judged not only by normal-trip performance but by how predictably vehicles behave when traffic controls and other road infrastructure fail.

Third-order effects

As robotaxi coverage expands, resilience to irregular urban conditions—blackouts, road closures and severe weather—becomes a gating capability for scaling service areas and operating hours.
Repeated, targeted suspensions followed by software changes could establish a model in which autonomous fleets expand gradually while retaining conservative operational boundaries for conditions they have not yet resolved.

The trend: Robotaxi deployment is shifting from proving autonomous driving in routine conditions to proving safe, recoverable operations when the surrounding city infrastructure breaks down.

Discussion

@elonmusk Elon Musk on x
Tesla Robotaxis were unaffected by the SF power outage
@walden_yan Walden on x
6 Waymo's parked at a broken traffic light blocking the roads. Seems like they were not trained for a power outage [image]
@_iagomaciel Iago Maciel on x
Power out in SF and the @Waymo's are causing a MASSIVE jam in North Beach 🤣 [video]
@borismpower Boris Power on x
I'm glad this happened during the early rollout stage. There's got to be many contingency plans for such eventualities in the future
@siddkhastgir @siddkhastgir on x
One of the less talked-about aspects of self-driving vehicle technology is its dependency on wider infrastructure. Waymo's stalling due to a blackout illustrates this. Hope they come out explaining the connection between their tech & infrastructure! https://techcrunch.com/...
@djmcflush Marcus on x
Proof of what I've been suspecting for a long time. Each Waymo is but a spoke dependent on a centralized server to communicate directions. Very limited local autonomy.
@pbeisel Phil Beisel on x
If this was simply Waymo's inability to handle dark intersections it points to a much broader problem. Waymo's planning system is not AI, it is a rules-based system. While it weighs various trajectories (plans) in real-time, it still relies on fixed weights. Effectively it is …
@joy Joy Larkin on x
12+ hours later and @Waymo service *is still suspended* in the SF Bay Area. No service in the South Bay.
@yoda Drew Olanoff on x
still can't believe this happened. rebuilding trust and momentum is going to lose waymo a ton of ground.
@okgodoit Roger on x
Oh what a surprise, another traffic jam from a confused @waymo that can't handle the power outage. Also cellular service has been pretty spotty so maybe their remote driver backups are having trouble controlling them? [image]
@jason @jason on x
Dead waymos all over SF blocking roads due to power outage 😂😂😂 [image]
@okgodoit Roger on x
So the power is out including the traffic lights and these two @Waymo are clearly out of their depth. Causing a pretty major traffic jam. #sanfrancisco [image]
@cyber_trailer @cyber_trailer on x
San Francisco, CA (DEC.20.2025) It's official. This is the 1,000th posted video from the Sunset Project™️. Just over 20m views on X to date. This afternoon's flurry of frozen Waymo's across the city of San Francisco causing a historic traffic meltdown has brought about the [video…
@sfstandard @sfstandard on x
Bad day to be a Waymo (and even worse to be inside or stuck behind one). A widespread blackout left robotaxis stalled across the city, causing traffic chaos Saturday night. Read more: https://sfstandard.com/... [video]
@mlnow @mlnow on x
Waymo has halted service in San Francisco after numerous videos & images showed its autonomous cars snarling traffic during the blackout. With traffic lights down, Waymos across the city stopped dead in their tracks at intersections. https://missionlocal.org/...
@fulligin Vincent Woo on x
Power outage took out the waymos RIP [video]
@lorak Lora Kolodny on bluesky
Waymo robotaxis are back in service in the SF Bay Area - company shared a few details on what went down with @cnbc.com. Here's a quick update: www.cnbc.com/2025/12/21/w...
@prietschka Paul Rietschka on bluesky
Yet another technology unready for prime time. A technology that is more fantasy, more wishful thinking, than reality. — Great example of a lack of training data, by the way, which is the issue here. How much training data do you think Waymo has of operating in an extended bl…
@lilmommaprods @lilmommaprods on bluesky
But listen guys this is the future and it's solved (still needs monitored by humans, still crashes, still limited to very specific areas friendly to it, will never not be this way) missionlocal.org/2025/12/sf- w...
@tzed250 David C B on bluesky
we absolutely do not need driverless cars, or self-driving cars for that matter. Put that money and talent toward something useful, like the #climatecrisis FFS — missionlocal.org/2025/12/sf- w...
@carlquintanilla Carl Quintanilla on bluesky
How blackouts in San Francisco this weekend shut down Waymo. — “.. Traffic lights across the city were down, seemingly confusing the driverless cars — and halting them in their tracks.” — @missionlocal.org $GOOGL — missionlocal.org/2025/12/sf- w... [image]
@bethosborne @bethosborne on bluesky
As AVs deploy and circle for passengers (or for their owners avoiding paying for parking), we will see traffic jams with empty cars regularly. We won't need a blackout. — missionlocal.org/2025/12/sf- w...
@allochthonous Chris Rowan on bluesky
I would dearly love to know what, if any, “what happens if...” discussions were had before deploying these things on city streets. — A traffic light going out is not much of a black swan! — Waymo halts service during massive S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams
@mims Christopher Mims on bluesky
in AI speak this is what we call an out of distribution event [embedded post]
@clarajeffery Clara Jeffery on bluesky
Waymos are bad for human jobs, but good, generally, for traffic safety. — Blackouts are (for the time being, anyway) an edge case, but the public needs to know how/if this can be addressed, bc that makes the impacts of quakes or cyberterror more fraught. sfstandard.com/2025/12/…
r/SelfDrivingCars r on reddit
Waymo resumes robotaxi service in San Francisco after blackout chaos — Musk says Tesla car service unaffected

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