Waymo's Big Blackout Test: Why Its Robotaxis Froze in San Francisco

What happens when a city’s lights go out, and the AI is left to drive? A massive blackout in San Francisco last weekend gave Alphabet’s Waymo an unplanned, real-world stress test. After its driverless cars were seen stalled on city streets, the company announced it's implementing changes to better prepare its fleet for when "infrastructure fails."

Robotaxis in the Dark

The incident began on Saturday, December 20th. According to Pacific Gas and Electric, a fire at a substation caused an outage that affected about 130,000 customers at its peak. With traffic signals dead, the city descended into gridlock. Videos quickly appeared on social media showing multiple Waymo vehicles halted in intersections.

In a blog post late Tuesday, Waymo stated it "directed our fleet to pull over and park appropriately" to avoid worsening the congestion or obstructing emergency vehicles. San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie confirmed that police and fire crews were deployed to manage the situation.

Waymo's Three-Step Response

After analyzing the event, Waymo outlined three "immediate steps" it's taking. First, the company is rolling out "fleet-wide updates" to give its vehicles more context about regional outages, enabling them to take more decisive actions at intersections.

Second, it's improving its emergency response protocols and coordinating directly with Mayor Lurie's team for better collaboration during emergencies. Finally, Waymo is updating its first responder training based on the learnings from this event.

Beyond the Bay Area, Waymo operates paid services in Austin, Phoenix, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. The company recently surpassed 450,000 weekly paid rides and is on pace to end the year with more than 20 million total trips since its launch in 2020.