Waymo opens Ojai robotaxis to select riders as company aims to lower cost of fleet expansion

Waymo is starting to offer select customers rides in its new Ojai robotaxis, which are designed to work better in snowier conditions and are cheaper to manufacture than the company’s older fleet of cars.

Rides will be available to some public passengers in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix, before opening up in San Diego, Las Vegas and Denver this summer, Waymo said in a statement on Thursday.

Alphabet’s self-driving division already had 100 Ojai vehicles on the road as part of its almost 4,000-car fleet. The company will have thousands of Ojai cars on the road by the end of the year, Ryan Powell, Waymo’s head of design, told CNBC in an interview. 

Waymo first announced the Ojai design in 2024. In February, the company opened rides to employees and their guests in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

As Waymo expands its fleet in an effort to cement its lead in the U.S. over Tesla and Amazon’s Zoox, the company is aiming to control costs. The Ojai is the first vehicle to take advantage of the sixth-generation Waymo Driver, the company’s proprietary driving system, which includes technology that can better detect critical details in low-light situations.

The vehicles, integrating new hardware and software, are made by China’s Geely, and cost significantly less to manufacture than earlier Waymo cars made by Jaguar and others. The Ojai robotaxis require fewer costly cameras and sensors than the previous Jaguar I-PACE vehicles.

Waymo, which got a $16 billion cash infusion in February from parent company Alphabet and other backers, offers fully autonomous robotaxis in several U.S. markets and plans to begin service in London later this year. The company has driven over 20 million overall autonomous rides and is looking to hit 1 million weekly trips by the end of the year, Powell said.

In the new vehicles, Waymo uses its own custom chips. The cars have also has been outfitted with improved lidar that can see through heavy rain and snow conditions, and have upgraded audio receivers that can better hear sirens and and other noises, the company said.

Ojai cars are roomier and also have removable steering wheels in them. The doors open and close automatically.

Powell said Waymo has learned from the design team that the “familiar form factor of the I-PACE and having the steering wheel and the pedals up there” helps people get “over that hump of trying something new.”

When asked whether the cars will integrate Google’s Gemini technology, Powell said the company is exploring more “natural ways of interacting with the vehicle” using AI technology. He gave the example of telling the car to move up a little further.

“I get excited about some of the things that you see on the Gemini side that may make some of those things possible,” he said.

While Waymo rapidly expands, the company is also dealing with some safety-related setbacks.

Earlier this month, Waymo issued a voluntary recall of about 3,800 of its robotaxis to fix software issues that could allow them to drive into flooded roadways, after incidents were captured on social media. Waymo said last week that it’s temporarily pausing freeway rides after spotting problems with its performance around construction zones. 

—CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

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