Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving unit, announced plans to produce autonomous Jaguar I-PACE and Zeekr vehicles at a new factory in Mesa, Arizona, as early as this year.
The company is partnering with Canadian auto parts supplier Magna International to bring its autonomous technology to these new vehicles.
Originally launched as a small self-driving project within Google in 2009, Waymo has steadily expanded in the challenging autonomous vehicle market, which has seen several companies falter due to high investment costs, regulatory hurdles, and technical difficulties.
The new factory, a multi-million dollar investment, has already created hundreds of jobs and will play a key role in scaling Waymo One, the company’s fully autonomous ride-hailing service. Waymo One currently provides more than 250,000 paid rides weekly across San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Austin, after surpassing 4 million paid trips in 2024.
The company plans to expand its service to Atlanta, Miami, and Washington, D.C., by 2026.
Waymo also plans to build more than 2,000 additional autonomous Jaguar I-PACE vehicles by next year and integrate its technology into new platforms, beginning with the Zeekr RT later this year.
Ryan McNamara, Waymo’s vice president of operations, described the Mesa plant as the “epicenter of our future growth plans.”
