The race to dominate driverless transportation took a leap forward today – Alphabet’s self-driving division, Waymo, is officially introducing its first custom-built EV, the Ojai. Select passengers in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix can now hail rides in this newly designed model. The company is even offering initial trips completely free of charge. This launch is a permanent shift away from retrofitting consumer electric cars, taking the industry toward purpose-built ride-hailing designs.
Waymo operates at a volume that makes other autonomous vehicle programs look like experimental projects. The company has completed over 20 million fully driverless trips across 11 cities. Its active fleet includes more than 3,000 electric cars, which collectively deliver around 500,000 paid rides every single week. The total service territory now spans more than 3,626 square kilometers, following a £12 billion investment round completed earlier this year, and pushing the firm’s market valuation to £92 billion.
Chinese automotive giant Geely manufactures the foundational platform for the Ojai through its premium EV brand, Zeekr. Workers assemble the base vehicle bodies in China before shipping them to a specialized Waymo facility in Mesa, Arizona. There, technicians outfit the vehicles with proprietary autonomous hardware. The Ojai has a single 200 kW (268 horsepower) electric motor powering the rear wheels. A 93 kWh lithium-ion battery pack provides the energy, using an advanced 800V electrical architecture for fast charging.
Designing a robotaxi from scratch allows for radical interior optimization. Traditional consumer electric cars prioritize the driver, but the Ojai focuses entirely on passengers. The cabin removes the traditional B-pillar structural support, using dual sliding doors to open up a spacious interior. Passengers step into a flat-floor cabin with an elevated ceiling and maximized legroom. The rear passenger section has three adaptive touchscreen displays for media and climate controls, alongside accessible charging ports and cup holders. The layout fits up to four passengers, with one sitting upfront next to the empty space where a steering wheel used to be.
The focus on accessibility is clearly visible in the new design. Waymo engineered a low step-in height to ensure easier entry and exit for all passengers, and the interior comes with grab bars and braille markings to assist passengers with visual or physical impairments. Every Ojai uses highly durable materials that are very easy to sanitize. These seemingly small changes drastically reduce maintenance turnaround times – a vital metric when managing thousands of electric cars at a global scale.
The biggest technical story belongs to the sixth-generation Waymo Driver software and hardware package. Engineers managed to slash the vehicle’s total sensor count by 42% compared to the older fifth-generation Jaguar I-PACE fleet. The Ojai uses 13 cameras instead of 29, four LiDAR units instead of five, and six radar units. To offset the fewer sensors, Waymo upgraded the individual component quality. The camera array utilizes a new 17-megapixel imager that delivers sharp, high-resolution visuals at night and targets objects up to 500 meters away in complete darkness.
The hardware reduction directly improves the financial reality of autonomous EVs. Waymo is looking at a manufacturing cost of under £15,000 for the sixth-generation driver hardware package, placing the company within striking distance of sustainable per-ride profitability. The updated sensor suite can reliably see through heavy rain and snow, unlocking winter testing and expansion into colder regions. Waymo has already started laying operational groundwork in Chicago, and the company plans to introduce its automated electric cars to international markets like London and Tokyo.
The aggressive rollout widens the gap between Waymo and its domestic competition. Tesla tests only about 25 unsupervised robotaxis across three cities in Texas, though the company claims its upcoming two-seat Cybercab will offer better energy efficiency due to a smaller footprint than Ojai. The latter carries more occupants, altering the overall efficiency equation. Chinese competitors like Baidu operate massive fleets domestically, but Waymo has no equal rival in the United States market.
The road to complete autonomy still throws up occasional roadblocks. Waymo temporarily paused services across multiple markets when its autonomous software struggled to detect deeply flooded roadways. These real-world edge cases require constant tracking and software updates; nevertheless – the rollout is moving quickly. Car spotters photographed multiple Ojai vehicles using public EVgo fast-charging stations in Sacramento, proving that the company is actively testing its new fleet on public roads. Waymo will eventually produce tens of thousands of these units annually, and plans to expand the autonomous hardware to the Hyundai IONIQ 5 platform.
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