EVwire brief: Waymo has acquired a 5,500-acre vehicle proving ground in Wittmann, Arizona, for $220 million.
The site previously belonged to Apple, which had bought it through a Delaware shell company. Documents filed with Maricopa County recorded the sale on June 5, and Waymo confirmed the purchase to TechCrunch.
Waymo announced the purchase on X:
The Arizona facility is purpose-built for vehicle testing and includes a 115-acre city course, a 35-acre vehicle dynamics area, a four-mile (6.4 km) oval track, and a freeway course built for autonomous-vehicle testing.
A Waymo spokesperson told TechCrunch the site will be used to simulate driving scenarios in a controlled setting to keep testing and improving its self-driving system, supporting rider-only testing, motion-control testing, operational training workflows, and future testing expansion.
Waymo has deployed its robotaxi service to several cities across the Unietd States
Context:
Apple bought the property in 2021 for $125 million after renting access to it for years. The site had served as a test facility for Fiat Chrysler before that, with different road surfaces and a high-speed oval used to put vehicles and components through hot-weather testing.
Apple ran prototype vehicles there under Project Titan, its long-running and frequently redirected car effort. The company scuttled the project in early 2024 after spending billions of dollars on it.
Waymo recently rolled out the Ojai, an autonomous van produced by Zeekr
The purchase rounds out a test-course network Waymo already had. The Alphabet-owned company still runs the Castle Proving Ground in California and uses the Transportation Research Center in Ohio, both of which are dwarfed by the Arizona site.
The expansion lands as Waymo scales a fleet of close to 4,000 vehicles. The company recently began offering its first public rides in the Zeekr-built Ojai van and plans to add the Hyundai Ioniq 5, with an ambition to produce tens of thousands of robotaxis per year.
Source: TechCrunch
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