A major power outage hit San Francisco over the weekend, knocking out electricity to around 130,000 customers after a fire damaged a Pacific Gas and Electric substation. Traffic signals went dark across much of the city, creating chaos on the roads.
Waymo’s autonomous vehicles, which rely heavily on functioning infrastructure, stalled at intersections. Videos showed clusters of the driverless cars frozen in place, contributing to gridlock as human drivers tried to navigate around them. The company paused its ride-hailing service that evening and resumed operations the next day.
Waymo explained that its vehicles are programmed to treat non-functional traffic lights as four-way stops, but the scale of the outage led them to pause longer than usual to verify intersections.
“Tesla Robotaxis were unaffected by the SF power outage,” Elon Musk posted on X, sharing footage of stalled Waymo vehicles alongside clips of Tesla’s system handling the same darkened intersections without issue.
Tesla Robotaxis were unaffected by the SF power outage https://t.co/uaYlhcSx25
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 21, 2025
The swipe at his competitor was the latest in an ongoing battle with not only Waymo, but also the state of California itself. Musk moved his Tesla headquarters to Texas and slammed Governor Gavin Newsom on his way out the door.
Meanwhile, his company’s innovations continue to lead the way in both electric and autonomous vehicles. Tesla’s approach—relying on onboard cameras, neural networks trained on real-world data, and less dependence on external signals—proved resilient in a crisis that exposed vulnerabilities in more centralized setups.
Waymo, owned by Alphabet, acknowledged the disruption. A spokesperson said, “[Saturday’s] power outage was a widespread event that caused gridlock across San Francisco, with non-functioning traffic signals and transit disruptions,” and added that the company is “committed to ensuring our technology adjusts to traffic flow during such events” while “focused on rapidly integrating the lessons learned from this event.”
America thrives when companies like Tesla prioritize self-reliance and robustness over fragile dependencies. In a nation built on ingenuity and independence, events like this remind us why betting on adaptable, homegrown technology matters for real-world reliability.
Musk is a corporate welfare bum parasite, and a fraudster. Decades after taking over Tesla, his fake cars routinely catch fire and explode, and his driverless cars routinely crash. The scammer and his enablers in govt. have syphoned billions in tax payer cash. America is a joke.