San Francisco's last Saturday before Christmas flipped from festive to frantic when a massive power outage plunged roughly a third of the city into darkness and left several Waymo robotaxis frozen in live intersections. Videos on social platforms showed the autonomous cars sitting still with their hazard lights blinking, blocking lanes and snarling traffic through multiple neighborhoods. City crews and utility workers labored into the night to get the lights back on while transit agencies and police scrambled to reroute traffic around the blackout zones.
Substation Fire Knocks Out Huge Swath Of The City
PG&E reported a "large outage" that peaked at about 130,000 customers and said crews had "stabilized the grid" while working to restore service. The San Francisco Fire Department posted on X that firefighters were on the scene of a one-alarm fire at a PG&E substation near 8th and Mission, and local reporting showed outages stretching from the Richmond and Sunset neighborhoods into parts of downtown. The Associated Press noted that crews contained the blaze and continued investigating the cause into the evening.
Waymo Slams The Brakes After Robotaxis Stall
Waymo told SFGATE, "We have temporarily suspended our ride-hailing services given the broad power outage in San Francisco," saying the pause was meant to keep riders safe and give first responders clear access. Pedestrian-shot videos and posts on X showed the driverless vehicles halted at dark intersections, and local reporters said the frozen cars piled extra gridlock onto already congested surface streets. Waymo did not offer a timeline for fully restoring service as crews and city agencies worked to reopen key corridors.
Transit Meltdown Hammers Holiday Shoppers
Public transit agencies scrambled as traffic signals and station power cut out. BART bypassed or closed stations including Powell Street and Civic Center, and Muni changed subway and bus operations, according to the Los Angeles Times. The city's emergency management office urged residents to avoid nonessential travel and to treat dark traffic lights as four-way stops, while police boosted staffing at key intersections to ease congestion. By late evening, PG&E said crews had restored power to tens of thousands of customers and were working overnight to finish repairs.
What The Outage Exposed About Driverless Taxis
The blackout highlighted how autonomous vehicles still rely heavily on grid-powered traffic infrastructure and steady communications. When signals and data feeds go dark, the cars' on-board safety systems are designed to simply stop. Recent coverage of the company's Bay Area expansion, Waymo Robotaxis Begin Freeway Service, shows how large fleets operating across city grids can be disrupted by even localized outages. For now, city officials, PG&E and Waymo say the priority is restoring power and clearing intersections so normal travel can resume.
