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%—in the dead of night. It additionally prompted a widespread Waymo meltdown, with apparently all energetic Waymo robotaxis within the affected components of the town caught in robotic comas, blocking intersections and choking 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 “briefly suspended” as a result of outage. “We’re targeted on retaining our riders secure and guaranteeing emergency personnel have the clear entry they should do their work,” Philion stated.

6 Waymo’s parked at a damaged visitors mild blocking the roads. Looks as if they weren’t educated 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 have been nonetheless out of fee, nor on what had prompted the issue within the first place.

Gizmodo requested Waymo if the autos had hassle traversing blacked-out stoplights, or if the difficulty had one thing to do with information reception or transmission. We additionally requested the corporate if any Waymo autos have been nonetheless blocking the streets. We’ll replace if we hear again. (Replace: Waymo offered a press release, which has been appended to the top of this text)

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

Corporations like Waymo maintain themselves up as harbingers of a safer future on the roads, touting statistics like 82% fewer crashes wherein 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 Seaside 🤣 pic.twitter.com/fuvhprlyma

— Iago Maciel (@_iagomaciel) December 21, 2025

Lifeless waymos throughout SF blocking roads attributable to 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 Equipment Kat in October, the difficulty could also be much less about Waymos being higher or worse than people in mixture than the truth that robots fail in unpredictable, alien methods. The actual footage of Kit Kat’s fatal injury exhibits one such instance. A human driver in all probability wouldn’t do what appears to occur within the video: begin from a lifeless 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 offered the next assertion:

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

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