Listen to this article

Waymo has launched its 6th generation robotaxi on Geely’s all-electric Zeekr vehicles. | Source: Waymo

Waymo has launched its 6th generation robotaxi. Alphabet’s autonomous driving division says its approach of developing both hardware and software from scratch has been critical to its success, and that continues with its latest generation robotaxi.

Waymo’s vehicles already complete more than 100,000 paid rides per week at their deployment locations using the 5th generation robotaxi, which launched in March 2020. The company says this system has been critical in expanding its service to some of the most densely populated cities in the U.S. But the latest robotaxi update aims to reduce system costs while offering more resolution, range and processing power to enable more features. Waymo has not specified how much it costs to manufacture its vehicles.

The 6th generation robotaxi is equipped with 13 cameras, 4 lidars, 6 radars and a series of external audio receivers (EARs). The company has optimized this new sensor unit for higher performance at a significantly lower cost. It provides the Waymo driver with overlapping fields of view all around the vehicle, up to a distance of 500 meters, day and night and in different weather conditions.

All of the new hardware will be used in Geely’s all-electric Zeekr vehicles. Waymo partnered with Geely in 2021 to integrate its Waymo Driver into a version of Zeekr that China-based Geely said was developed in Sweden specifically for autonomous ride-sharing services. Waymo previously used all-electric Jaguar I-PACE vehicles as the basis for its robotaxis.

The Biden administration proposed a 100% tariff on electric vehicles from China in May 2024, up from the current 25%. “We are monitoring the tariff situation in China but have no news to share,” Waymo said. The Robot Report.

Waymo expands robotaxi capacities

Redundancies are essential in an autonomous driving system to provide safe backup capabilities for guaranteed reliability and unexpected weather conditions. This is why the Waymo driver has a 360-degree view of the world from three sensor modalities.

Thanks to improved all-around visibility with camera radar and more sophisticated lidar systems, Waymo’s 6th generation robotaxi can handle the wide variety of events it may encounter on a wider range of road conditions. Although the 6th generation’s sensor suite is extensive, Waymo says it used fewer sensors than in the previous generation. The company’s advances in sensor technology and strategic sensor placement allowed it to reduce the number of sensors while maintaining safety-critical redundancies.

The company can swap out different sensor components to adapt to the specific conditions of each operating environment, such as adjusting sensor cleaning for vehicles in colder climates. Speaking of colder climates, you may notice that the cities where Waymo has deployed its robot taxis are typically warm year-round. This is something that could change with the latest generation vehicle, the company said.

Waymo’s current system enables the company to provide safe and reliable service to its riders in the cities it serves, even in extreme heat, fog, rain and hail. By regularly driving into newer cities, Waymo says it has deepened its understanding of how winter weather impacts its technology and operations and applied those learnings directly to its 6th generation system.

For example, because its robot taxis are exposed to the elements for long periods of time without manual intervention, Waymo has implemented preventative measures for each sensor to ensure a clear view of its surroundings, whether the robot is driving on bumpy Texas roads or operating in freezing temperatures. In addition to these protective strategies, the company builds significant reserves into its sensor capabilities to ensure reliable performance even in adverse conditions, increasing the range of each vehicle.

Waymo wants to deploy its robot taxis more quickly in new cities

Waymo has now manufactured six generations of hardware and integrated it into thousands of vehicles and says it has extensive experience developing and deploying fully autonomous technology at scale. To safely and quickly integrate its next-generation driver into its fleet, the company tests and validates its new hardware – from the component to the system level – through a rigorous program of structured testing, real-world driving and simulations.

The 6th generation sensor suite already has thousands of miles of real driving experience under its belt and millions more in simulations. The Waymo driver learns from the collective experience of its entire fleet, including previous generations of hardware. Waymo says this shared knowledge reduces the miles needed to train and validate the underlying base models that drive its vehicles autonomously, accelerating and improving the development of each new generation.

The company says safety is its guiding principle, and its system’s performance in simulation shows promising signs that Waymo is on track to begin operations in about half the time without a human at the wheel.

Other recent milestones in the field of robotaxis

Although Waymo is not the only robotaxi company in the US, it is a clear market leader. Just two weeks ago, it expanded its robotaxi operations in San Francisco and Los Angeles. This was the latest in a series of expansions the company has introduced this year, including Remove his waiting list in San Francisco, Start commercial activities in Los Angeles and expanded its service area in Phoenix. Not to mention that Alphabet has doubled its investment in Waymo by announcement Up to 5 billion dollars are expected to flow into the company in the coming years.

Waymo’s biggest competition, at least in the past, has come from GM’s self-driving division Cruise. That company had a difficult 2023, resulting in the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) revoking Cruise’s licenses in the state and Cruise ceasing all operations nationwide.

This year, Cruise appears to be rebuilding some of its operations. Manual driving has resumed in Houston and Dallas, and supervised driving has been announced in Phoenix and Dallas. In Phoenix, Cruise began manual operations in April. In its home state of California, Cruise has not yet resumed robotaxi operations. In June, General Motors announced it would invest an additional $850 million in the autonomous vehicle developer.

Zoox is another well-known autonomous vehicle company in the US. The Amazon subsidiary began testing its custom-built robotaxis in Austin and Miami in June 2024, marking the fourth and fifth public test locations for the company. Zoox began operations in San Francisco in 2018 and expanded to Las Vegas in 2019 and Seattle in 2021.