EVwire brief: Reed Morse, who goes by @reed on X and is working as Senior Staff Software Engineer at Waymo, shared an image of the Waymo Ojai vehicle in an unusual color: fully silver.
Will we see the already quite common blue Ojais turn silver more often or is this a one time thing, we don’t have any info on yet… although Reed did say “can’t wait to see these on the road”.
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The timing on a silver vehicle, however, is quite interesting given that what some could call the archenemy of the company (we don’t, for the record, as we think both are advancing the good cause of autonomy), Tesla, is launching a golden Cybercab in Austin today. 45 Cybercabs are now registered as robotaxis in Texas.
Context:
Waymo's Ojai is the company's first robotaxi designed specifically around autonomous ride-hailing rather than being a conventional passenger vehicle retrofitted for the job. The vehicle is built by Zeekr, Geely's premium EV brand, before being shipped to Magna's facility in Mesa, Arizona, where Waymo integrates its autonomous hardware.
The Ojai uses Waymo's sixth-generation Driver, with 13 cameras, six radar sensors and four LiDAR units, more than 40% fewer sensors than the previous-generation system while retaining the hardware needed for fully autonomous operation. The Ojais are now generally available.
EVwire previously counted 953 Ojai vehicles at the Mesa facility earlier this month, including 684 already equipped with Waymo's autonomous hardware and apparently ready for deployment
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That represented a substantial increase from roughly 500 Ojai vehicles counted at the factory in June.
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