Waymo has played coy for years for exactly how many Jaguar i-Pace EVS are in the autonomous fleet-a figure that covers vehicles used in robot testing and commercial businesses. On Monday, the Alphabet Company finally took a look at the commercial side of the fleet.
Waymo said Monday, As part of a larger announcementThat it has over 1,500 commercial robotas in operation. And work is underway to expand it through a multi-million dollar investment with Magna to build more than 2,000 i-Pace autonomous vehicles at a new factory in Arizona.
Waymo has worked with Magna for years, that is, in a closed installation in Detroit. The new 239,000 square foot plant in Mesa’s Phoenix suburb is strategically located in one of Waymo robots and near other San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin.
A Waymo spokesman told TechCrunch that the company looked at other locations, but eventually chose MESA for its proximity to other markets and because consistent weather made it ideal for the validation process required before the public can be used by the public.
Waymo stated in a blog post that announced the factory that it had received a final delivery from Jaguar earlier this year. From here, Builder Magna and Waymo undertake the integration of the self-guiding system into vehicles. Waymo highlighted a new process aimed at accelerating the production process to ratify public use, noting that AVS can be removed from installation and directly to the service.
“In fact, these vehicles can take their first public passengers less than 30 minutes after leaving the factory,” Waymo told his blog post. The company said vehicles intended for other cities could be deployed in public service in a few hours after being sent to their local warehouse.
The Mesa plant is designed to handle other vehicle platforms, mainly to incorporate the sixth generation of Waymo’s self-guiding system into Zeekr RT later this year.
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The plant will introduce an automated assembly line and other efficiency over time, according to the company, which noted that the plant would be able to build tens of thousands of fully waymo vehicles per year when operating with full capacity.
