Waymo, the Google-owned self-driving company that uses Jaguar I-Pace electric cars to shuttle people around cities without drivers, is slowly becoming a household name. While Tesla is only just now launching its self-driving car service, Waymo has forged ahead, becoming the leader in the space.
These I-Paces have been operating without drivers for years now, but they haven’t been perfect. As it turns out, developing software that can replicate a human driver isn’t exactly easy, which has resulted in numerous issues for people using the service and the people driving nearby, some more lighthearted than others.
The city of San Francisco discovered yet another shortcoming for Waymo’s cars over the weekend when parts of the city’s power grid went down on Saturday night, leaving roughly 130,000 customers without power. City streets were left without overhead lighting or working traffic signals. Waymo cars deployed on the street ended up stopped in place and unable to proceed, blocking traffic and generating gridlock situations.
The Timeline of Events
Posts on social media showed Waymo’s autonomous vehicles stopped on city streets with their hazard lights flashing on Saturday night, blocking drivers and causing jams.
Waymo itself acknowledged the issue, telling The Verge it suspended services in the San Francisco area to focus on “keeping our riders safe and ensuring emergency personnel have the clear access they need to do their work.”
Pacific Gas & Electric, the utility company responsible for the affected area, announced on Sunday, 2 p.m. Pacific time, it had restored power to 114,000 customers after a substation fire. That evening, Waymo sent another statement to The Verge confirming it had resumed operations in the city:
We are resuming ride-hailing service in the San Francisco Bay Area. Yesterday’s power outage was a widespread event that caused gridlock across San Francisco, with non-functioning traffic signals and transit disruptions. While the failure of the utility infrastructure was significant, we are committed to ensuring our technology adjusts to traffic flow during such events.
“Throughout the outage, we closely coordinated with San Francisco city officials. We are focused on rapidly integrating the lessons learned from this event, and are committed to earning and maintaining the trust of the communities we serve every day.
What Exactly Happened Here?
Waymo has yet to reveal why its cars froze up as soon as the going got tough, though that won’t stop me from speculating. Waymo cars don’t strictly rely on data networks to function, since they predominantly use pre-mapped data and their suite of onboard cameras, radar, and LIDAR sensors to make decisions.
???????? SAN FRAN BLACKOUT – WAYMO FROZE, TESLA DROVE
Waymo’s robotaxis got a little too real last night – by completely shutting down when San Francisco’s power outage knocked out traffic lights.
Meanwhile, Teslas on FSD? Kept rolling. No drama, no headlines – just handling chaos… pic.twitter.com/8FinYpAOcB
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) December 21, 2025
Nonetheless, the prevailing theory right now is that strained cellular networks are what caused the Waymos to brick themselves. Waymo shared in a blog post last year that when Waymo vehicles encounter unique situations, they come to a stop and reach out to a “human fleet response agent” for help to navigate. These agents can view real-time feeds from the cars and rewind to see how the car got there in the first place.
This communication requires an internet connection with serious bandwidth, and because many people were likely using cellular data instead of Wi-Fi at the time—due to the power outage—the networks were likely strained enough to slow communication between the Waymos and the fleet response agents. The lack of streetlights and traffic signals probably caused several unique situations, too, which couldn’t have helped matters.
Really, it’s not all that surprising this happened; Waymo relies on network connections to those cars, and those servers and routers and other equipment use electricity. It’s likely the most plausible solution if this happens again is to provide some sort of power backup to crucial systems.
Though Waymo has made huge strides in recent years with its self-driving tech, this situation is proof that engineers have yet to conquer every distinct scenario a vehicle might come across. Driving a car might feel simple because you do it every day, but the reality is far different. There’s a lot of subconscious brainpower and decision-making going on when we drive, even if it feels just as easy as walking.
Tesla Robotaxis were unaffected by the SF power outage https://t.co/uaYlhcSx25
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 21, 2025
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, ever the one to capitalize on a bit of publicity, posted a statement to his social media company X on Sunday morning, saying that Tesla’s fleet of Robotaxis was unaffected by the power outages. That’s not totally surprising, since these cars still have real, actual humans behind the wheel as supervisors. So while Elon might say the cars were unaffected, it’s possible the supervisors were just there to immediately fix anything that went wrong while the streetlights and traffic lights were out.
Top graphic image: Kevin Chen on YouTube
The post Waymo’s Robotaxis Falling Flat On Their Faces After A Simple Power Outage Is Proof Self-Driving Cars Still Have A Long Way To Go appeared first on The Autopian.
