Waymo has performed coy for years about precisely what number of Jaguar I-Tempo EVs are in its autonomous fleet — a determine that covers autos utilized in testing and business robotaxi operations. On Monday, the Alphabet firm lastly supplied a peek on the business facet of the fleet.
Waymo stated Monday, as part of a larger announcement, that it has greater than 1,500 business robotaxis in operation. And work is underway to broaden it by way of a multi-million-dollar funding with Magna to construct greater than 2,000 autonomous I-Tempo autos at a brand new manufacturing facility in Arizona.
Waymo has labored with Magna for years, specifically at a now closed facility in Detroit. The brand new 239,000-square-foot manufacturing facility within the Phoenix suburb of Mesa is strategically positioned within the one among Waymo’s robotaxi markets and near its different service areas throughout San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin.
A Waymo spokesperson informed 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 supreme for the validation course of required earlier than the robotaxis can be utilized by the general public.
Waymo stated in a weblog submit saying the manufacturing facility that it obtained remaining supply from Jaguar earlier this yr. From right here, contract builder Magna and Waymo take over to combine the self-driving system into the autos. 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 power and immediately into service.
“In reality, these autos can choose up their first public passengers lower than half-hour after leaving the manufacturing facility,” Waymo stated in its weblog submit. The corporate stated that autos supposed for different cities could 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 yr.
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The plant will introduce an automatic meeting line and different efficiencies over time, in keeping with the corporate, which famous that the plant might be able to constructing tens of hundreds of absolutely autonomous Waymo autos per yr when working at full capability.