For years, Waymo has been hiding exactly how many Jaguar I-Pace EVs it has in its autonomous fleet – a figure that includes vehicles used for testing and commercial robotaxi operations. On Monday, Alphabet finally provided information about the commercial part of its fleet.
Waymo said on Monday, as part of a larger announcement, that it has more than 1,500 commercial robotaxis in operation. And work is underway to expand that number with a multimillion-dollar investment with Magna to build more than 2,000 autonomous I-Pace vehicles at a new plant in Arizona.
Waymo has been working with Magna for many years, including at a closed plant in Detroit. The new 239,000-square-foot plant in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa is strategically located in one of Waymo’s robotaxi markets and close to other service centers in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin.
A Waymo spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company considered other locations, but ultimately chose Mesa because of its proximity to other markets and because its stable weather makes it ideal for the verification process required before the robot taxi can be used by the public.
Waymo said in a blog post about the plant’s opening that it received its last delivery from Jaguar earlier this year. From that point on, contract builder Magna and Waymo will take over the integration of the self-driving system into vehicles. Waymo emphasized a new process designed to speed up the production, certification, and commissioning process, noting that self-driving cars can drive themselves out of the factory and immediately go into service.
“In fact, these vehicles can pick up their first passengers less than 30 minutes after leaving the factory,” Waymo said in a blog post. The company said that vehicles destined for other cities could be deployed in public transportation within hours of being shipped to a local depot.
The Mesa plant is designed to work with other transportation platforms, including the integration of Waymo’s sixth generation self-driving system into Zeekr RT later this year.
The plant will eventually introduce an automated assembly line and other efficiency improvements, according to the company, which noted that when operating at full capacity, the plant will be able to produce tens of thousands of fully autonomous Waymo vehicles per year.
