Waymo Expands Self-Driving Fleet with New US Manufacturing Facility
Table of Contents Waymo Expands Self-Driving Fleet with New US Manufacturing Facility
Self-driving tech company Waymo announced Monday that it is significantly expanding its autonomous vehicle operations in the US with the opening of a new manufacturing facility in Mesa, Ariz.
Currently, Waymo operates over 1,500 autonomous vehicles in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin, Tex., completing more than 250,000 paid trips per week. With the new Mesa facility, the company plans to add 2,000 more vehicles to its fleet by 2026, and expand to cities like Atlanta, Miami and Washington, DC.
Read More: Watch Waymo's Self-Driving Cars Navigate a Freeway
This 239,000-square-foot plant, developed in partnership with Magna, will retrofit Jaguar I-PACE electric SUVs with Waymo's sixth-generation autonomous driving technology, known as the Waymo Driver. The facility is expected to produce thousands of vehicles annually, accelerating Waymo's mission to provide fully autonomous ride-hailing services in cities all across the country.
The Mesa facility also introduces streamlined processes that enable vehicles to be ready for passenger service shortly after production. For instance, vehicles assigned to the Phoenix fleet can begin picking up passengers within 30 minutes of leaving the factory.
"The Waymo Driver integration plant in Mesa is the epicenter of our future growth plans," Ryan McNamara, Waymo vice-president of operations, said in the statement. "With our partners at Magna, we've opened a manufacturing site that enables the cost efficiency, flexibility, and capacity to scale our fleet to new heights."
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
What is a Waymo car?
( — Waymo vehicles have been in headlines over the last few days after anti-immigration enforcement protestors set some of them on fire in Los Angeles. But what are they? A Waymo car is a fully autonomous, self-driving vehicle operated by the company Waymo, a Google subsidiary. It operates on a rideshare service application called Waymo One, which offers on-demand, self-driving transportation in select cities, according to How does ICE know who to deport? Waymo began in 2009 in San Francisco as an experiment and went on in 2016 to become a fully-operational robotaxi service in some major cities. 'The Waymo Driver is the embodiment of fully autonomous technology that is always in control from pickup to destination,' the company said on its website. 'Passengers don't even need to know how to drive. They can sit in the back seat, relax, and enjoy the ride with the Waymo Driver getting them to their destination safely.' Waymo cars are currently available in Phoenix, AZ, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin, TX, according to its website. They are reportedly coming soon to Atlanta, GA, and Miami, FL. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
At least 6 Waymo autonomous vehicles have been vandalized amid anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles
At least six Waymo self-driving cars have been damaged by the violence taking place in Los Angeles in recent days amid protests against federal immigration raids, according to a representative for the company. The autonomous vehicles, as well as some Lime electric scooters, have been vandalized, and in some cases set on fire and completely destroyed. Videos of people climbing the Waymo robotaxis and bashing in the windshields, as well as clips of Waymo cars engulfed in flames, were shared widely online, quickly becoming key imagery of the protests in downtown Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Police Department warned people on Sunday to steer clear of the area, due to the risk of toxin exposure from electric batteries catching on fire. All of the self-driving taxis deployed by Waymo, which is owned by Alphabet, are electric. 'Burning lithium-ion batteries release toxic gases, including hydrogen fluoride, posing risks to responders and those nearby,' the department warned in a social media post. No Waymo riders or employees were harmed during the incidents, and passengers had exited vehicles before they were vandalized, according to a Waymo spokesman. The company stopped service downtown on Monday as the protests continued, though Waymo continued to operate in the broader Los Angeles region. 'Out of an abundance of caution given the recent activity, we removed vehicles from Downtown Los Angeles and will not be serving that specific area of LA at the moment,' a Waymo spokesman said in a statement, noting that the company is working with the police department and other authorities to assess the situation. It's not clear whether protesters decided to specifically target the Waymo cars or the Lime scooters, and it's possible that the vehicles and scooters were in an unfortunate place as the protests escalated. The Los Angeles Department referred all questions to Waymo and said it did not know if any incident reports had been filed at this time. Waymo declined to comment on the total estimated damage, and Lime declined to comment. Analysts have estimated that the Waymo Jaguar I-Pace SUVs, which are equipped with radar and lidar equipment, cost between $150,000 to $200,000 each. In San Francisco, where anti-ICE protests have also been ongoing, there was another isolated instance of a Waymo being vandalized, according to the company. Self-driving vehicles have periodically become the targets of vandals, with instances of tire slashing or people throwing fireworks into the vehicles. A couple years ago, a man with a hatchet chased several self-driving Cruise taxis around the streets of San Francisco—sometimes when there were passengers inside. President Donald Trump ordered the National Guard to intervene in Los Angeles on Saturday. Protesters clashed with police, dumpsters were vandalized, and the Los Angeles Police Department shared videos on social media of a store being looted. By Monday, the protests had calmed, though there was still a large group of protestors marching downtown. Waymo, which operates in San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Austin, and is planning to launch in Austin and Miami, is currently the only robotaxi company in the U.S. offering commercial operations in several different markets. Tesla is preparing to launch a robotaxi service in Austin this month, although the rollout will be very limited with just 10 to 20 vehicles at first. Waymo said it had surpassed 10 million paid rides near the end of May. This story was originally featured on
San Francisco Chronicle
7 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Waymo is routing cars away from S.F. ICE protests. How did the robotaxis become a protest symbol?
Lighting cars on fire has long been a tactic to escalate protests and capture the public's attention. But demonstrators opposing the immigration raids in Los Angeles have a new target: Waymo robotaxis. At least five Waymos had been torched in Los Angeles as of Monday, each creating a dramatic, made-for-social media tableau. Photos that circulated online showed the jaunty electric Jaguars engulfed in flames and spattered with graffiti as demonstrators leapt atop their hoods. In one particularly dramatic image, a masked protestor stands on a Waymo and raises a skateboard over his shoulder, as though preparing to smash it through the vehicle's windshield. The vandalism reached a point that prompted Waymo to divert service from downtown Los Angeles and other areas where protests were anticipated, including parts of San Francisco, a company spokesperson told the Chronicle. 'People are looking to attack symbols of power,' said Omar Wasow, an assistant professor of political science at UC Berkeley. Following a police officer's murder of George Floyd in 2020, people set fire to police cars in Seattle, Minneapolis and Philadelphia. Now, in an era when Big Tech is shaping society — and many Silicon Valley executives are aligning with President Donald Trump — resistance movements have a new target to direct their rage. While Waymo cars are far removed from the immigration debate, they can serve as a kind of proxy for the world's most influential corporations: Waymo's parent company, Alphabet, owns Google. Anti-tech sentiment can easily translate into 'anti-Waymo sentiment,' Wasow said. However, the messaging might not be that deep. Since they roam downtown streets without drivers and obediently stop whenever an object blocks their path, Waymos are fairly easy to set ablaze, Wasow noted. And the lithium batteries in the vehicles make them burn hotter and longer for maximum spectacle. If the cars represent Silicon Valley's infiltration of public roads, they can also be hapless victims. Vandals who set fire to a Waymo driverless car in San Francisco's Chinatown neighborhood last year had no clear social crusade. Police later arrested a teenager for the crime. 'There's a lot of wanton destruction that's completely disconnected from any symbolism,' said Cameron Gieda, a mobility executive who specializes in autonomous vehicles. Gieda, who lives in Los Angeles, heard the staccato chop of helicopters flying over his roof Monday. He said he's witnessed a lot of civil unrest in which protestors destroy cars — possibly, he reasoned, to create an obstruction for traffic or law enforcement. Whether such acts are effective for making a statement has long been a point of contention among activists and academics. Violence and property damage grabs headlines and accelerates media coverage, Wasow said. Yet it also skews that coverage. 'It tends to have the protest framed not around the core question of 'Is mass deportation a just policy? ''' Wasow said. Rather, he concluded, the conflict between protestors and police, or the incineration of autonomous vehicles, becomes the story. But perhaps not in San Francisco, at least on Monday. 'We're temporarily adjusting our service,' the Waymo app stated, in response to a request for a car downtown, 'which may limit availability in some areas and increase wait times and routing. Thank you for your patience.'
