Waymo has released its Ojai autonomous EV minivan to the public in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix. The vehicle, purpose-built with Chinese EV firm Zeekr, costs between $75,000 and $100,000 per unit, less than half the $200,000 required to adapt the previous Jaguar I-PACE fleet for autonomy. Despite using 42% fewer sensors—13 cameras and 4 Lidars versus the Jaguar's 29 cameras and 5 Lidars—the ground-up design utilizes cheaper parts suited for mass manufacturing.
Waymo plans to have 1,000 Ojai vehicles on the road by the end of the year, with 100 currently in operation. While the new minivan offers more rear legroom and uses the sixth-generation Waymo driver to reduce fleet expenses, some early feedback indicates the vehicle is generally worse than previous versions.
Key sources
- SOURCE@bearlyai“Original Jaguar I-PACE fleet costs $200k per vehicle to adapt for autonomy.”x.com
- SUPPORT@_techcapsules_“The Zeekr-built vehicle uses Waymo's sixth-generation driver and is meant to lower fleet costs as service expands.”x.com
- SUPPORT@miles_brundage“the Ojai Waymo is indeed generally worse than the old Waymo as some have been saying.”x.com
- SOURCE@sawyermerritt“The ASIC’s specialized accelerators instantly extract critical information from raw lidar, radar, and camera streams”x.com
- SUPPORT@wallstengine“can process all 13 high-resolution cameras simultaneously in real time”x.com
- SUPPORT@wallstengine“down from ~$100K-$125K for the previous generation”x.com
- SUPPORT@stocksavvyshay“A big driver is vertical integration including a custom 5nm chip capable of 1,000 TOPS”x.com
- SUPPORT@edludlow“Waymo's purpose-built 5nm ASIC”x.com