Waymo has performed coy for years about precisely what number of Jaguar I-Tempo EVs are in its autonomous fleet — a determine that covers automobiles utilized in testing and business robotaxi operations. On Monday, the Alphabet firm lastly offered a peek on the business aspect of the fleet.
Waymo mentioned Monday, as half of a bigger announcement, that it has greater than 1,500 business robotaxis in operation. And work is underway to increase it by a multi-million-dollar funding with Magna to construct greater than 2,000 autonomous I-Tempo automobiles at a brand new manufacturing facility in Arizona.
Waymo has labored with Magna for years, particularly at a now closed facility in Detroit. The brand new 239,000-square-foot manufacturing facility within the Phoenix suburb of Mesa is strategically situated within the one in all Waymo’s robotaxi markets and near its different service areas throughout San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin.
A Waymo spokesperson instructed TechCrunch the corporate checked out different places, however in the end it selected Mesa for its proximity to different markets and since the constant climate made it very best for the validation course of required earlier than the robotaxis can be utilized by the general public.
Waymo mentioned in a weblog put up saying the manufacturing facility that it obtained ultimate supply from Jaguar earlier this 12 months. From right here, contract builder Magna and Waymo take over to combine the self-driving system into the automobiles. Waymo emphasised a brand new course of designed to hurry up the production-to-validation-to-public use course of, noting that the AVs can drive themselves out of the ability and immediately into service.
“In actual fact, these automobiles can choose up their first public passengers lower than half-hour after leaving the manufacturing facility,” Waymo mentioned in its weblog put up. The corporate mentioned that automobiles meant for different cities may be deployed into public service in a matter of hours after being shipped to their native depot.
The Mesa manufacturing facility is designed to deal with different automobile platforms, notably to combine the sixth-generation of Waymo’s self-driving system into the Zeekr RT later this 12 months.
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The plant will introduce an automatic meeting line and different efficiencies over time, based on the corporate, which famous that the plant can be able to constructing tens of hundreds of absolutely autonomous Waymo automobiles per 12 months when working at full capability.
