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 industrial robotaxi operations. On Monday, the Alphabet firm lastly offered a peek on the industrial aspect of the fleet.
Waymo mentioned Monday, as half of a bigger announcement, that it has greater than 1,500 industrial robotaxis in operation. And work is underway to increase it via a multi-million-dollar funding with Magna to construct greater than 2,000 autonomous I-Tempo automobiles at a brand new manufacturing unit 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 unit within the Phoenix suburb of Mesa is strategically situated within the one in every of 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 areas, however finally it selected Mesa for its proximity to different markets and since the constant climate made it ideally suited for the validation course of required earlier than the robotaxis can be utilized by the general public.
Waymo mentioned in a weblog publish saying the manufacturing unit that it acquired ultimate supply from Jaguar earlier this yr. 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 power and straight into service.
“The truth is, these automobiles can choose up their first public passengers lower than half-hour after leaving the manufacturing unit,” Waymo mentioned in its weblog publish. The corporate mentioned that automobiles supposed for different cities may be deployed into public service in a matter of hours after being shipped to their native depot.
The Mesa manufacturing unit 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 accordance with the corporate, which famous that the plant can be able to constructing tens of hundreds of totally autonomous Waymo automobiles per yr when working at full capability.
