Waymo opens its Zeekr-built Ojai robotaxi to all riders in SF, LA, and Phoenix
Waymo opened the Ojai — a Zeekr-built minivan running its sixth-generation self-driving system with Gemini as an in-car assistant — to all riders in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, with about 300 in commercial service. MoffettNathanson's import tracking puts Waymo on pace for 5,000 Ojais in the US by the end of 2026, more than double its Jaguar I-Pace fleet, though tariffs on Chinese-built vehicles erode the cost savings. The fleet is shifting from stopgap retrofit to purpose-built economics, and the binding constraint on robotaxi scale is now manufacturing and trade policy rather than driving capability.
Source: techcrunch.com ↗
The Ojai is a minivan made by Zeekr, a brand owned by China's Geely Holding Group.
TechCrunch
Why this matters
- → Robotaxi economics now hinge on manufacturing scale and trade policy, not driving capability.
- → Waymo's shift to purpose-built hardware signals confidence in autonomous driving maturity.
- → Chinese tariffs directly compress margins on the cheapest self-driving platform at scale.
Hardware meets trade policy