• I’ve seen some of the jags around town. Let’s see how they handle the snow

    Waymo Jaguars? wild

    The whole current fleet are jaguars. Totally strange choice.

    Probably a bidding process & Waymo probably wanted a luxury brand.

    Or maybe, since hardly anyone buys Jaguars anymore, their bid came in desperately low when Waymo was looking for vendors.

    The Jaguar interiors are pretty nice but not what I'd call luxury-level.

    It's Jaguar's newish EV SUV (I-Pace).

    It really helped Jaguar launch an EV platform by guaranteeing initial sales and they got access to Waymo/Google patents and technology so they didn't have to reinvent things or license as much from other sources. Meanwhile Waymo got input into the vehicle's design so it was guaranteed to fit their needs.

    Win/win for both companies.

  • So are these not being used or are they staged out waiting to be used? There just isn't enough demand yet?

    I was just listening to a podcast where this was the subject, Omnibus, they cover various events and people that had a long lasting impression or major impact. They had a guest host thats an engineer for a public transportation sector, in Ontario Canada. They covered the first unmanned race put on by DARPA, in 2002, they invited a bunch of colleges to compete. Long story short he thinks the biggest hurdle will be having dedicated lanes for driverless vehicles in large cities, at least in Canada. Because some do not follow traffic laws, they'll try to jump in the driverless lanes and eventually cause a wreck. I want to say they were already planning on driverless 18 wheelers since that was their biggest need.

  • Where in Denver was this? Finally saw one of the Jags driving around recently.

    1314 Elati St, Denver, CO 80204

    This hotel has a small parking area full of them

  • It's kinda crazy how waymo beat Tesla to the "futuristic self driving taxi" thing after years of Tesla making a big deal out of it.

    Waymo’s secretly been in development for longer than teslas been building cars so it makes sense 

  • Why do you think they aren't used? They gather lots of miles in development before opening new vehicles up to customers

    They're Chinese made. Tarrifs aside, there's massive federal governmental regulations and required federal certification needed before you they can drive them on American roads. Mostly they have to be inspected to assure the US government that they're not connected to the internet using specific Chinese technology.

  • I’ve been seeing these driving around Scottsdale/Phoenix area for 3-4 months now. Always with a driver though

    Saw one in a San Diego about a week ago on the back of a tow truck. Blinkers on, no driver.

  • Man I love Chinese cars. This thing looks cool as hell and it bet it costs like $25k

    They're used as consumer cars here in China. Just saw one the other day. They're pretty neat looking.

    Problem is, a new $15,000 Chinese EV will cost about $90k before it's road legal in the US (including tarrifs and replacing basically all of its technology so the US will certify it for use).

    Thankfully I'm Canadian and we're about to start bringing Chinese cars over without all that hassle. American car mfgs pulled out of Canada so we don't give a shit about the future of the American car industry anymore

    A single Jaguar Waymo costs up to $200,000 so only god knows how much The zeekr is to cost to build