Waymo’s 6th-Gen Electric Robotaxis at CES 2025
Waymo is expanding its fleet of autonomous robotaxis to more cities and needs new driverless cabs. These two EVs from Zeeker and Hyundai fit the bill, boasting the sixth-generation Waymo Driver hardware and software suite.
Today we’re taking a look at the next generation of driverless cabs for Waymo here at CES 2025. Now it’s no secret that the Jaguar I-Paces that Waymo uses for its current Robo Taxis aren’t going to be manufactured forever given the unstable state of Jaguar today. So Waymo needs to start thinking about what vehicles it’s gonna use to get people around in its driverless cabs in the future. We got two cool cars to show you. The Zeker RT was built from the ground up to be a robotic taxi, and it’s like nothing else you’ve probably seen on the road before. It’s got a micro van configuration, so there’s a lot of space in the back for passengers, and that’s going to give you a lot more headroom for taller passengers, a lot more legroom, and a much more comfortable ride. But even so, outfitting this thing with the 6th generation of Waymo’s driver software and hardware means that they’ve got these large pods at all four corners as well as the array on top. So. The advantages of a tall vehicle like this is that you get those sensors higher up off the road on the roof of the vehicle, and that means that they can see further down the road, which is safer overall. But either way you go, Waymo says they’ve got somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 m of range with overlapping visual fields for their cameras, and that’s before you even get to the light radar sensors. This vehicle right here is already testing in San Francisco, and when I say this vehicle, I mean this one right here. They had to clean it up to bring it on the show floor, and if you look close, you can see a little. Bit of wear on it. They haven’t said when they’re going to start offering rides in it, but I’d wager a guess at it sooner rather than later. Let’s take a look at the second vehicle that Waymo is looking at the Hyundai Ionic 5 RoboTaxi, a fully autonomous version of one of my favorite EVs. Now, if you look closely, you’ll see that it’s been outfitted with the 6th generation of the Waymo driver suite of hardware and software, and the aim of the Wavo driver suite in the 6th generation is to simplify and make this whole system cheaper to implement. So they’ve stepped. Down from around 30 cameras to around 16, and they say that they’re able to get the same or better recognition when they’re driving around. Unchanged for this generation are the 5 LIDAR sensors and 6 radar sensors, as well as the sound sensors that the cars used to do things like look out for oncoming emergency vehicles. Be sure to head over to CNET.com, where we’ve got all of our coverage at CES 2025 from AI to automotive to home and so much more. Drive safe, and I’ll meet you there.