The Waymo San Antonio service is back on the road, five months after a recalled fleet and a software overhaul that followed one of the company’s robotaxis being swept into a creek during a flash flood.
Waymo confirmed the resumption this week, telling the San Antonio Express-News, which first reported the news, that dozens of its white Jaguar I-Pace vehicles would begin covering a 60-square-mile area including downtown, several residential neighbourhoods, the Arena District, and San Antonio International Airport. The service area runs roughly inside Interstate 10 to the south and west and Loop 410 to the north and east.
Waymo spokesman Chris Bonelli told the Express-News that riders on the existing waitlist would receive a push notification from the Waymo app, and that the company plans to ‘continually welcome people from the remaining waitlist over the coming weeks before opening to anyone in the city later this year.’
What Went Wrong on 20 April
The sequence that triggered the recall started on 20 April 2026, when an unoccupied Waymo vehicle entered a flooded section of roadway rated for 40 miles per hour, travelling at a reduced speed but failing to stop. Houston Public Media reported the car was swept into Salado Creek; no one was injured, as the vehicle was unoccupied.
That same day, Waymo implemented additional operational restrictions at times and locations with an elevated risk of encountering flooded, higher-speed roadways. Four days later, on 24 April, Waymo’s Safety Board reviewed the incident and decided to proceed with a formal recall. The voluntary recall was filed with regulators on 30 April, according to ABC7, with Waymo’s official Part 573 Safety Recall Report submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on 6 May 2026.
That report, NHTSA Recall No. 26E026, lists 3,871 units of Waymo’s 5th Generation Automated Driving System as potentially involved, covering vehicles produced between 17 March 2022 and 19 May 2026. Some secondary reports had put the figure at approximately 3,800 or 3,791; the primary NHTSA filing gives 3,871.
Waymo San Antonio Service Rebuilt on New Software
Waymo told the Express-News it has updated its software to improve detection of standing water. The company now uses National Weather Service data and local guidance to monitor conditions, with Robert Chen, Waymo’s product lead for weather, overseeing that work.
The question is whether those updates hold in practice. The April incident was not an isolated software edge case, multiple Waymo vehicles slowed but continued driving into waterlogged streets during the same storm. Waymo briefly suspended operations in other Texas cities around the same period, though those services resumed sooner.
The flood recall was also not the only regulatory action against Waymo’s fleet this year. A second NHTSA Part 573 filing, Recall No. 26E035, submitted on 17 June 2026, covers a separate software defect related to behaviour in freeway construction zones. That recall covers the same 3,871-unit pool of 5th Generation ADS vehicles. Waymo’s Safety Board reviewed that issue on 1 June and 8 June before deciding to recall.
Two recalls in roughly six weeks, for two distinct software failures, sit alongside a broader pattern of incidents. CNBC has reported that Waymo vehicles have previously failed to yield to school buses in Austin and blocked traffic in San Francisco during a widespread power outage in December. The company says it now provides over half a million trips weekly across the United States.
Scale brings scrutiny. Waymo currently operates paid rides in 15 US cities, and the San Antonio re-entry matters partly because of what it signals to regulators and to other markets watching how the company handles recovery from a concrete, documented failure. The next test will come with the first heavy rains of the season.
