Waymo, the robotaxi company owned by Alphabet, announced today that it’s letting employees and guests start taking trips in vehicles powered by its sixth-generation autonomous driving system. The most advanced Waymo Driver system is now running in its new Ojai robotaxis, which are built on base vehicles supplied by Chinese automaker Geely.
“This latest system serves as the primary engine for our next era of expansion, with a streamlined configuration that drives down costs while maintaining our uncompromising safety standards,” Waymo Vice President of Engineering Satish Jeyachandran wrote in a blog post.
Waymo says the new system is built with more affordable components and is designed to handle a wider range of environments, including extreme winter weather. The sixth-generation driver system makes use of updated sensors, including a new high-resolution 17-megapixel imager that can capture millions of data points. The company says the improved sensor allows the system to see around the vehicle with fewer cameras than lower-resolution setups would require. It also uses more affordable and efficient lidar and radar sensors.
The system is designed to be adaptable across different types of vehicles. For now, that includes the new Ojai taxis and Hyundai Ioniq 5 SUVs. Waymo’s current fleet of Jaguar I-Pace vehicles will still run on its fifth-generation technology; however, the company received it finale delivery of I-Pace cars last year.
That said, Waymo says it plans to scale production at its Phoenix factory with this latest driving system to tens of thousands of vehicles per year. This is key for the company as it races to expand into more cities this year.
Waymo currently operates its robotaxi service in Austin, San Francisco, Phoenix, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Miami. The company recently said it has plans to expand its service to 20 additional cities this year, including Tokyo and London.
Still, the new update and expansion plans come as the company faces renewed scrutiny from federal regulators. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently opened a probe into an incident in January in which a Waymo robotaxi struck a child near a Santa Monica elementary school during drop-off hours. According to Waymo, the vehicle detected the child as they ran out from behind a parked SUV and braked hard, slowing from about 17 miles per hour to under 6 miles per hour before making contact.
In announcing the investigation, NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation said it would examine whether Waymo “exercised appropriate caution” given the vehicle’s proximity to a school and the presence of young pedestrians. Last month, the agency also launched a separate probe after reports that Waymo vehicles failed to stop for school buses.
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