Waymo vehicles, the self-driving taxis from Google parent company Alphabet, have emerged as a literal flashpoint in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement protests in Los Angeles, which ramped up heavily over the weekend.
The protests against the president’s immigration crackdown in the city began on Friday, as ICE raids broke out among several majority-Latino neighborhoods such as Paramount. Although the subsequent protests were reportedly mostly peaceful, Trump deemed them sufficiently disruptive to warrant sending in 2,000 National Guard troops on Saturday. It was a historic escalation, the first time a president has activated the National Guard without request from a state’s governor since 1965—and it provoked an incendiary reaction.
On Sunday, amid rising tensions, protesters ultimately set at least five Waymo vehicles ablaze. Though their reasons for doing so remain unconfirmed, plenty of evidence suggests what might have fueled their actions.
Waymo, one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies for 2025, first began as a Google self-driving car project in 2009, before launching commercially in Phoenix in 2020. The company then spread out to San Francisco in 2022, before hitting Los Angeles last November. As of last December, the service had driven over 50 million rider-only miles, according to the company’s website.
Around 100 of Waymo’s 1,500 total robotaxis currently operate in Los Angeles during normal conditions, covering roughly 79 square miles from Santa Monica to downtown L.A. After those five cars were destroyed on Sunday, though, the company removed vehicles from downtown L.A. and shut down service in that area for the time being. (“We are in touch with law enforcement,” a representative from the company confirmed to Fast Company.)
Before the end of the day, both X and Bluesky ensured that images and videos of the fiery vehicles had circulated widely, leaving a trail of jokes and finger-wagging in their wake.
Setting vehicles on fire has a long history in protest going back at least to the 1992 Los Angeles riots following the verdict in the Rodney King trial, and before that, the 1968 Paris student and worker uprising in France. Though obviously illegal, igniting cars tends to serve as a defiant expression of rage and hopelessness in the face of perceived oppression.
On a practical level, one reason protesters might be choosing Waymos is because they are owned by a massive tech company, rather than any one individual. (Alphabet led a $5.6 billion funding round for Waymo last fall to cover costs through the division’s next growth period.)
Destroying these cars comes with a guarantee that no drivers will be injured, financially or otherwise, since no such drivers exist. Protesters can simply order up a Waymo to incinerate as easily as ordering a pizza. Their very lack of humanity makes them ripe targets in a civil uprising.
Of course, there appears to be strategic reasons for targeting Waymos as well. According to a report from 404 Media back in April, the LAPD is known to requisition and publish footage from these autonomous vehicles, which are equipped with roving cameras, to solve various crimes around the city. Since Waymos can function as mobile panoramic Ring cameras, protesters who prefer to limit the amount they are captured on film have incentive to disable as many Waymos as possible.
Rumors circulated on Bluesky late on Sunday that some protesters may have set Waymos on fire strictly because the cars may be essentially collecting evidence for future trials, although vandalism of the cars seems extremely traceable.
However, one final reason why protesters may have targeted Waymos is because there is an overlap between the people defending their immigrant neighbors and the people who are generally against society’s automated future.
No civil unrest was necessary, after all, for a fired-up Lunar New Year crowd in San Francisco to set a Waymo on fire in February 2024. All it took was an autonomous cab jamming its way into an intersection packed with revelers who happened to be loaded for bear with firework—and an increasing sense that driverless cabs are now a symbol of everything people hate about AI.
There have been further incidents of Waymo vandalism, though, in both San Francisco and Los Angeles in the months since.
CNN’s Brian Stelter described the blaze on Sunday as “something out of a dystopian sci-fi novel.” But really, what’s more dystopian: robotaxis being destroyed in a protest, or automated taxis working perfectly and putting thousands in an immigrant-friendly profession out of a job?
The final deadline for Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech Awards is Friday, June 20, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.
