Waymo Recalls Nearly 4,000 Robotaxis Over Flooding Risk

Waymo has issued a recall affecting nearly 4,000 self-driving vehicles after discovering problems with how its robotaxis handle flooded roads.

The recall, announced Tuesday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, comes after several incidents in which Waymo vehicles struggled to safely navigate through dangerous flood conditions.

According to documents released by the regulator, Waymo’s autonomous vehicles were slowing down when approaching flooded roads but were not always stopping completely when the water became impossible to cross. Both the company’s fifth-generation and sixth-generation self-driving systems are impacted.

The recall affects 3,791 vehicles, giving one of the clearest looks yet at the size of Waymo’s growing robotaxi fleet operating across roughly a dozen U.S. cities.

Waymo has already deployed an initial software update to all affected vehicles. The update introduces temporary restrictions that limit operations in areas and situations where flooded high-speed roads are more likely to occur.

However, federal regulators say the issue is not fully resolved yet.

In the recall filing, NHTSA noted that Waymo is still “developing the final remedy” for the flooding problem. That means the current software patch is considered more of a temporary safeguard while engineers continue working on a permanent solution.

The recall follows major flooding incidents in central Texas earlier this year. In one widely discussed case, an empty Waymo robotaxi in San Antonio was reportedly swept away by floodwaters after attempting to navigate a dangerous roadway. Following the incident, the company paused operations in the city.

Waymo said it identified “an area of improvement regarding untraversable flooded lanes specific to higher-speed roadways.” The company added that it is now refining how its robotaxis operate during extreme weather events, especially periods of heavy rainfall and flash flooding.

The company also said it is implementing additional software protections and limiting access to regions where flooding risks are elevated.

This is not the first recall involving Waymo’s autonomous vehicles.

The company issued its first major recall in February 2024 after two separate robotaxis in Phoenix crashed into the same towed vehicle. Since then, additional recalls have addressed low-speed collisions involving parking gates and telephone poles, along with cases where robotaxis behaved improperly near stopped school buses.

As self-driving technology expands into more cities, weather-related edge cases are becoming an increasingly important challenge for autonomous vehicle companies. Situations involving heavy rain, flooding, and rapidly changing road conditions remain difficult for even advanced AI driving systems to handle consistently.

The latest recall highlights the growing pressure on robotaxi operators to prove that their vehicles can safely respond not only to everyday traffic, but also to unpredictable real-world hazards.

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