With massive demonstrations anticipated across the Bay Area on Saturday, firefighters in San Francisco are bracing for one dramatic form of protest theater: The torching of Waymo robotaxis.
Burning the driverless cars became a fraught symbol of the moment during protests in Los Angeles Sunday and Monday, which tipped off a week of escalating tension between President Donald Trump and California’s major blue cities. Photos of the charred, smoldering, graffiti-scrawled cars instantly went viral on social media, transforming a manicured Southern California boulevard into an apparent war zone. If it happens in San Francisco, Fire Chief Dean Crispin said at a recent meeting, it might be better to let the cars burn.
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“In a period of civil unrest, we will not try to extinguish those fires unless they are up against a building,” Crispin told members of the San Francisco Fire Commission on Wednesday. He explained that since the electric Waymo SUVs run on lithium ion batteries, they burn “incredibly hot” and tend to explode when ignited.
Such blazes are challenging to put out, and become dangerous due to the rapidly rising temperatures of the cars’ batteries, a phenomenon called “thermal runaway,” Crispin said. These sudden spikes can lead to sporadic eruptions…