Waymo’s New Robotaxi Is Designed For Bad Weather

The Chinese-built Zeekr driverless minivan has a new, more advanced sensor suite compared to the Jaguar I-Pace robotaxis.

Waymo Driverless Minivan

Photo by: Waymo

Iulian Dnistran

By: Iulian Dnistran

Aug 20, 2024 at 4:55am ET

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Waymo’s sixth-generation driverless taxi is now being tested in the United States.
The electric minivan is made in China and features a more advanced and compact sensor suite.

This Chinese-built, Zeekr-branded bubble-shaped minivan is Waymo’s attempt at making driverless taxis a widespread reality in the United States. The all-electric vehicle is adorned with Waymo’s sixth-generation autonomous driving system which is more advanced than ever before but also less expensive to build because it uses fewer components than the previous-gen array used in the Jaguar I-Pace EVs that were recently spotted honking at each other in a parking lot in the middle of the night (an issue that has been reportedly resolved.)

That more advanced sensor suite has been designed to better cope with bad weather, including freezing temperatures and snowy conditions. Some of the sensors can also clean themselves to ensure they can “see” even in adverse weather.

Speaking of “seeing,” the so-called Waymo Driver suite has no fewer than 13 cameras, 6 radars, 4 lidar sensors and a bunch of audio receivers that provide overlapping, 360-degree fields of view for the car’s brain, enabling it to detect objects at up to 1,640 feet away.

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In an official blog post, the Alphabet-owned company said the vehicle combines three image sources–video cameras, lidar and radar–for redundancy and increased safety on the road. Furthermore, depending on specific road conditions–such as extreme heat or very snowy areas–Waymo can swap out various sensing components to make the system adapt better to local weather conditions.

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The autonomous vehicle company said the latest sensor suite already has thousands of miles of real-world driving experience and millions more in simulation. The Zeekr-built minivan is also out and about doing public testing, but it’s still not ready for prime time–Waymo said it’s on track to begin operating without a human behind the steering wheel in about half the time it took with the previous-gen system.

The Zeekr-built driverless minivan features a removable steering wheel, seating for five and four sliding doors for easy ingress and egress. The EV was designed and engineered in Sweden and is built at one of Geely’s factories in China, which raised some questions about the profitability of Waymo’s efforts considering the hiked import tariffs on Chinese EVs, as well as the software-related safety concerns. Regarding the latter, the driverless cab company said the vehicles are leaving the assembly line without any software or sensors produced by Zeekr and are shipped to the United States where the hardware and software are installed.

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