Safety concerns over autonomous taxis grow after Waymo recall

Waymo, the self-driving taxi company owned by Google (Alphabet), has issued a major recall affecting thousands of autonomous vehicles in the United States after identifying a software flaw that could allow robotaxis to drive into flooded roads.

The voluntary recall covers nearly 3,800 vehicles using Waymo’s fifth- and sixth-generation autonomous driving systems. Details of the issue were disclosed this week in a letter published through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, as reported by US media outlets.

The recall follows an incident on April 20 in San Antonio, where an unoccupied Waymo vehicle entered a flooded roadway and was swept into a creek.

Waymo has temporarily suspended its service in San Antonio following the event, though the company said operations will resume once the software update has been fully deployed.

A company spokesperson said additional “mitigations” had already been introduced, including restricting vehicle access to areas at risk of flash flooding.

The incident adds to growing scrutiny surrounding the safety and reliability of autonomous taxi services. Over the past year, several high-profile disruptions involving driverless vehicle operators have raised broader concerns about the technology.

In April, a widespread outage involving Apollo Go robotaxis in Wuhan reportedly left at least 100 self-driving cars stranded in traffic. In December 2025, a major power outage in San Francisco caused widespread disruptions to Waymo vehicles operating across the city.

Waymo currently operates only in the United States, but the company has announced plans to expand into United Kingdom and Japan.

The setback comes at a particularly sensitive moment for the company, as Elon Musk recently announced that Tesla  had begun production of its own autonomous robotaxi, the Tesla Cybercab, in April, with commercial deployment expected by 2027.

By Nazrin Sadigova