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Waymo vehicles stall during San Francisco power outage while Tesla cars remain operational
Monday, December 22, 2025 at 03:21 AM
A power outage in San Francisco reportedly caused Waymo robotaxis to malfunction and stall, while Tesla vehicles continued to operate successfully.
Context
During a widespread power outage in San Francisco on December 18, 2024, multiple Waymo autonomous vehicles reportedly stalled in active traffic lanes, while Tesla vehicles remained operational. The blackout disabled traffic signals and local communication networks, triggering a "fail-safe" shutdown for the Waymo fleet. While Tesla drivers navigated the darkened intersections using vision-based AI, the Waymo robotaxis became immobilized, requiring manual intervention to clear the streets and highlighting a critical reliance on external infrastructure.
This incident underscores a major architectural divide in the AI and semiconductor supply chain. Waymo’s reliance on cloud connectivity and high-definition maps creates significant "edge-case" risks during grid failures. In contrast, Tesla’s on-device processing offers greater resilience when network infrastructure fails. For investors, these reliability gaps represent a significant regulatory hurdle for Alphabet as it scales, potentially shifting the competitive advantage toward Tesla's decentralized AI model in the race for fully autonomous urban mobility.
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