Jaguar's all-electric luxury SUV, widely used by Waymo as its robotaxi fleet vehicle for autonomous ride-hailing services.
The Ojai is a Zeekr minivan carrying Waymo's sixth-generation sensor stack, and it is the company's first real attempt at hardware that pencils out. Tariffs are working against it.
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The 2027 date Waymo, Nihon Kotsu and GO have set for public driverless trips in Tokyo depends on national and local permits the partners have yet to obtain, and on a fleet that only gradually reaches about 100 cars.
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Waymo has a Singapore timetable that runs to 2028. Whether it holds depends on approval from the Land Transport Authority and a safety assessment at a government test centre Waymo still has to clear.
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Waymo's plan puts Jaguar I-PACEs on Singapore roads within months and a year of manual driving in 2027, and the Land Transport Authority has said deployment will not outrun its ability to retrain affected drivers.
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Waymo's Jaguar I-Pace cars went live in Nashville on September 9 hailable from either Waymo One or Lyft, and the agreement between the two companies binds neither side exclusively.
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The safety case for driverless cars is argued in collision counts, and TechCrunch's read of federal injury filings shows the people inside the test fleet paying for it in whiplash and months off work.
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The Ojai vans picking up riders in San Francisco and Phoenix are built in Ningbo and land under a 127.5 percent tariff, a cost a fleet operator can spread over years of paid trips and a dealership cannot.
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A Forbes account puts the Zeekr-built Ojai at about $38,000 before more than 125 percent in stacked duties. Waymo is buying in volume anyway, which is a statement about assumed margin.
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