Autonomous driving: Waymo plans 2,000 new robotaxis by 2026

The US robotaxi start-up Waymo wants to continue to grow. By 2026, 2,000 more fully autonomous vehicles are to be added to the fleet, which currently comprises 1,500 vehicles. Today, Waymo offers more than 250,000 paid rides per week in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin "and we're preparing to bring our fully autonomous ride-hailing to Atlanta, Miami and Washington, D.C. in 2026," the company said in a blog post on Monday. To support the growing number of drivers in the U.S., the company and its partner Magna are investing in U.S. manufacturing with a new autonomous vehicle factory in Mesa, Arizona, in the Phoenix metropolitan area, it added. Magna International is a Canadian-Austrian automotive supplier headquartered in Aurora, Canada.

The approximately 22,000 square meter Waymo plant will build thousands of Jaguar I-PACEs equipped with fully autonomous technology, according to the blog post. The Jaguar I-PACE has been the company's primary vehicle since Waymo retired its fleet of Chrysler Pacifica minivans in 2023. "Waymo's driver integration plant in Mesa is the epicenter of our future growth plans," said Ryan McNamara, vice president of operations at Waymo. "With our partners at Magna, we've opened a manufacturing facility that provides the cost efficiency, flexibility and capacity to take our fleet to new heights."

Collaborations with Geely and Toyota

The flexible design of the facility will allow the 6th generation Waymo Driver to be integrated into new vehicle platforms, Waymo added, starting this year with the Zeekr RT. Zeekr is a subsidiary of Geely, one of China's largest car manufacturers. According to tech portal The Verge, the new robotaxi is being developed in Sweden, where Geely owns Swedish carmaker Volvo, and is based on Geely's all-electric five-door Zeekr. Waymo will then import the vehicles to Arizona, where they will be equipped with the hardware and software required for autonomous driving. The first test vehicles already arrived in the USA last year. In addition, the Japanese car manufacturer Toyota wants to develop autonomous cars together with Waymo, which will also be offered to private car buyers.

The Waymo plant, in turn, should be able to build tens of thousands of fully autonomous Waymo vehicles per year at full capacity, Waymo writes in its blog. Thanks to the new manufacturing facility in Arizona, "the vehicles assigned to our Phoenix fleet can drive themselves out of the factory and go straight into the field. In fact, these vehicles can pick up their first passengers in less than 30 minutes after leaving the factory."

Waymo's plans to expand its fleet are becoming public at a time when other companies are entering the market for autonomous cabs. It was only in mid-April that Volkswagen announced plans to put self-driving cars on the road in the USA from 2026 in collaboration with Uber. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, in turn, declared that Tesla intends to launch its own robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, at the end of June –, initially with ten to twenty of its Model Y cars.

(akn)