Project
Waymo's robotaxi model, built on a Zeekr SEA-M platform and fitted with Waymo's self-driving sensors and compute hardware.
Tesla nearly quadrupled its authorized Cybercab fleet in Texas to 169 in a month, against Waymo's 1,154 autonomous vehicles in the state. With the shares down 18% this year, the stock depends on that pace holding for many more months.
Reality
The Ojai is a Zeekr minivan carrying Waymo's sixth-generation sensor stack, and it is the company's first real attempt at hardware that pencils out. Tariffs are working against it.
Perspective Coverage
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The safety case for driverless cars is argued in collision counts, and TechCrunch's read of federal injury filings shows the people inside the test fleet paying for it in whiplash and months off work.
Reality
The Ojai vans picking up riders in San Francisco and Phoenix are built in Ningbo and land under a 127.5 percent tariff, a cost a fleet operator can spread over years of paid trips and a dealership cannot.
Reality
Waymo says its custom ASIC delivers more than 1,000 TOPS of sensor pre-processing before the driving stack sees a frame. The cheaper-to-build claim underneath it still carries no number.
Reality
The first hardware disclosure from the leading robotaxi operator turns an autonomy pitch into a supply-chain document, with 20x compute growth in eight years and redundancy it calls non-negotiable.
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A Forbes account puts the Zeekr-built Ojai at about $38,000 before more than 125 percent in stacked duties. Waymo is buying in volume anyway, which is a statement about assumed margin.
Reality