A major power outage swept across San Francisco on Saturday, disrupting daily life for hundreds of thousands of residents and exposing unexpected vulnerabilities in the city’s growing reliance on autonomous technology. At the height of the outage, roughly 124,000 of San Francisco’s 414,000 electricity customers—nearly 30 percent of the city—were left without power. Homes, businesses, traffic systems, and public infrastructure were all affected, but one of the most visible consequences unfolded on city streets, where Waymo’s self-driving vehicles appeared to fail simultaneously.
As the blackout spread through affected neighborhoods, what seemed to be nearly every active Waymo robotaxi operating in those areas became immobilized. The autonomous vehicles entered what observers described as “robotic comas,” freezing in place at intersections, along busy roadways, and in travel lanes. Their sudden inactivity blocked traffic flow, clogged intersections, and created confusion for human drivers attempting to navigate streets already made more dangerous by darkened traffic signals and limited visibility. In some areas, the stalled vehicles reportedly worsened congestion and delayed emergency and transit services during an already chaotic situation.
Waymo acknowledged the disruption later that evening. At approximately 7:00 p.m., company spokesperson Suzanne Philion released a statement confirming that Waymo had “temporarily suspended” its ride-hailing service in response to the outage. Philion emphasized that public safety was the company’s primary concern during the incident. “We are focused on keeping our riders safe and ensuring emergency personnel have the clear access they need to do their work,” she said, signaling that the shutdown was intended to prevent further complications while city crews worked to restore power and manage traffic conditions.
Despite the statement, many questions remained unanswered as of Sunday morning. Waymo did not immediately clarify whether its robotaxi fleet had fully returned to service or whether vehicles were still stranded across the city. The company also did not disclose what specific technical failure caused the fleet-wide shutdown. Observers speculated that the autonomous vehicles may have struggled to operate safely without functioning traffic lights, or that the blackout interfered with critical systems related to navigation, communications, or real-time data processing.
Gizmodo reached out to Waymo seeking clarification on several key issues, including whether the robotaxis had difficulty interpreting intersections without power, whether the outage disrupted the vehicles’ ability to send or receive data, and whether any cars remained stuck and obstructing public streets. At the time of publication, the outlet noted that it had not yet received definitive answers, though it pledged to update readers if additional information became available.
In the absence of a detailed technical explanation or post-incident analysis from the Alphabet-owned company, speculation continued to circulate. Without transparency into the failure, it remained unclear whether the incident resulted from a centralized system breakdown, a loss of external infrastructure support, or a cascading failure triggered by the power outage itself. Until Waymo provides a comprehensive postmortem, there is no way to fully rule out the possibility that a single point of failure effectively disabled the entire autonomous fleet at once.
Waymo, like many companies developing self-driving technology, frequently presents autonomous vehicles as a cornerstone of a safer and more efficient future. The company often cites statistics suggesting dramatic reductions in serious crashes, including 82 percent fewer incidents involving airbag deployment and 92 percent fewer pedestrian collisions resulting in injury when compared with human drivers. These figures are intended to demonstrate the potential benefits of removing human error from the equation.
However, incidents such as Saturday’s blackout underscore a different concern: while autonomous systems may outperform humans in certain measurable scenarios, they can also fail in sudden, unfamiliar, and highly disruptive ways. The issue may not be whether robots are statistically safer overall, but rather that their failures tend to be systemic and unpredictable, affecting many vehicles at once instead of isolated individuals.
This concern echoes previous controversies involving Waymo in San Francisco, including an incident last October in which a Waymo vehicle fatally struck a locally well-known cat named Kit Kat. Video footage of the event suggested a response pattern that many human drivers would find counterintuitive—highlighting how autonomous systems can misinterpret or rigidly follow programmed behaviors in complex, emotionally charged, or ambiguous situations.
Similarly, while human drivers may struggle during blackouts or adverse conditions, they do not typically “go offline” simultaneously. The mass immobilization of autonomous vehicles during Saturday’s outage illustrated how dependent these systems are on stable infrastructure, and how quickly that dependence can translate into citywide disruption when something goes wrong.
Update (7:12 p.m. ET): Waymo later issued an additional statement confirming that ride-hailing service was resuming in the San Francisco Bay Area. The company acknowledged that the outage was a widespread event that caused significant gridlock throughout the city, citing non-functioning traffic signals and transit interruptions. Waymo stated that it had closely coordinated with San Francisco city officials throughout the incident and emphasized its commitment to learning from the event. The company said it is working to ensure its technology can better adapt to traffic conditions during infrastructure failures and reiterated its goal of earning and maintaining public trust within the communities it serves.
A parenthetical note was also added to reflect that Waymo ultimately responded to Gizmodo’s inquiries.