San Francisco Blackouts Raise Concerns about PG&E and Robotaxis

KQED's Forum

KQED

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.2 • 727 Ratings

🗓️ 7 January 2026

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A blackout that left one-third of San Francisco customers without power – some up to three days – was one of six outages that plagued PG&E throughout the holidays. Disabled Waymos blocked streets. The Nutcracker was cancelled. Restaurants and businesses were closed. Customers and politicians are demanding answers and calling for the end of PG&E’s monopoly. We’ll talk about the blackout and what it can tell us about the reliability of our power sources and Waymo’s vulnerabilities, and we’ll hear how it affected you. Guests: Joe Eskenazi, managing editor and columnist, Mission Local Jeffrey Tumlin, former Director of Transportation, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) Brad Templeton, entrepreneur, writer; Templeton is the chairman emeritus of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and previously worked at Waymo Bilal Mahmood, supervisor, District 5, Board of Supervisors San Francisco Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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1:01.0	From KQED. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Last month, there was a blackout in San Francisco
1:10.3	seen around the world. While losing power is
1:13.3	bad, it's also pretty common. What was unusual was that there were countless Waymo stranded
	...

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