SF Examiner – Waymo rolls out new vehicles in San Francisco
See original article by Troy Wolverton at the SF Examiner
You might have noticed recently that Waymo has some new vehicles on the road that look quite a bit different from its seemingly ubiquitous Jaguar i-Paces — and pretty much everything else driving around.
The Mountain View-based robotaxi company is in the process of incorporating the cars, manufactured for it by Chinese automobile maker Zeekr, into its fleet. Dubbed Ojai (pronounced “OH-hi,” like the city in Southern California), the new vehicles look like small minivans or SUVs. They are distinguished by their horizontally sliding front and rear doors, their smaller sensor arrays and their cornflower-blue paint.
Waymo began testing the vehicles with drivers in them last year, according to Chris Bonelli, a company spokesman. Last month, it began giving driverless autonomous rides in the car in The City — as well as in Los Angeles and Phoenix — but only to employees, he said.
Waymo plans to start offering rides in them to the general public “soon,” Bonelli said, but declined to say exactly when. The company is still testing the vehicles to make sure they meet its safety standards and are ready for commercial operation, he said.
“When we are ready, we will certainly open our doors — quite literally — to the public,” he said.
Waymo unveiled its concept for what would become the Ojai in late 2021. The vehicle was designed to be easier to enter and exit than a typical car. Unlike the i-Pace vehicles, the Ojai doesn’t have a pillar that separates its front and rear doors. And unlike a minivan, its front and rear doors open like elevator doors, sliding in opposite directions to create a large entryway.
The Ojai includes Waymo’s sixth-generation autonomous-vehicle technology, which the company calls the Waymo Driver. The new version includes a streamlined sensor array. The updated array has 13 cameras and four lidar sensors, compared with 29 cameras and five lidar sensors in the previous version, according to Bonelli.
Despite the reduction in sensors, Waymo believes the array will be just as capable as the prior version, he said.
Bonelli said the company expects the sensor array and the Ojais will be less costly than the previous array and the i-Paces. The plan is to build both “at scale,” producing tens of thousands per year, he said.
“Each generation of the Waymo Driver, we work to reduce those costs and reduce the complexity,” Bonelli said.
The company is also outfitting Hyundai Ioniq 5 vehicles with its sixth-generation autonomous technology, although testing for those vehicles is not as far along as is that for the Ojai, Bonelli said. The advantage of those cars — which are all-electric, as are the Ojais and the i-Paces — is that they are highly rated and are capable of being recharged rapidly, he said.
See original article by Troy Wolverton at the SF Examiner
