Waymo autonomous vehicles were set on fire in downtown Los Angeles over the weekend amid growing protests against President Donald Trump’s immigration workplace raids.
According to KTLA, at least five Waymos were seen on fire or charred on North Los Angeles Street near Arcadia Street. CNBC confirmed that number, reporting that a spokesperson for the Alphabet-owned company verified the vehicles could not be retrieved and the company was suspending service in the area.
The spokesperson also said that Waymo shut down the app in response to requests from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), a fact many on social media learned from the Scanner Pacific X account (@ScannerPacific), which monitors and tweets updates from Los Angeles police and fire radios.
Call a car, burn a car
One specific tweet, posted at 8:45pm on June 8, became the lodestone for discussion surrounding the flaming Waymos, with social media users largely celebrating the flaming robotaxis. “LAPD requesting Waymo shutdown the app. People keep calling them and then lighting them on fire,” reads the tweet.
Quote replies to videos of the burning cars were filled with jokes. “Hugging my Waymo extra tight today,” wrote @paularambles above a video of the flaming Waymos.
“It’s great that Waymo invented Uber for car fires,” @ghost_prole added, while @CoorsLightCEO joked, “Waymos marching to their own death, oblivious of what is to come. Acting out of duty, for it is all they know. Much to think about.”
@twunkbucket repurposed a canonical Twitter post by Mike Primavera (@primawesome) to read, “My neighbor told me protestors keep burning his waymos so I asked how many qaymos he has and he said he just goes to the app and gets a new afterwards so I said it sounds like he’s just feeding waymos to protestors. And then his mayor started crying.”
Los Angeles’s response to the ICE raids is becoming an example of what resistance to tyranny looks like in America today, and the destruction of the Waymos is part and parcel of that. 404 Media reported in April that the LAPD obtained video from a Waymo as part of a criminal investigation, suggesting authorities are already using the robotaxis as sources of surveillance footage.
As the tech oligarchy becomes cozier and cozier with the current administration—the tech billionaires at Trump’s inauguration, the president employing Palantir to gather data on American citizens—the more likely we are to see the destruction of the tools employed by the state and its adjuncts.
As activist and data scientist @samswey wrote on X, “There are people on here saying it’s violent and domestic terrorism to set a Waymo car on fire. A robot car? Are you going to demand justice for the robot dogs next? But not the human beings repeatedly shot with rubber bullets in the street? What kind of politics is this?”
Indeed, footage from the LA protests also showed an officer clad in riot gear firing a rubber bullet directly at 9News correspondent Lauren Tomasi, striking her in the leg without provocation. The clip, shared widely online, shows the officer deliberately aiming toward the cameras before firing.
Somehow, a self-driving taxi bursting into flames is the most fitting image of a country spiraling through protest, government overreach, and automation. The future really is here, just not how most of us imagined.
@hecubian_devil said it best: “This is VERY funny. The idea of ordering a car fire on demand is such an absurd synecdoche for our times. Not a political judgment! You’re not allowed to yell at me!”
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