Waymo begins fully autonomous ops with 6th-gen Driver, targets 1M weekly rides

Waymo is now running its 6th-generation Driver without safety drivers on public roads, marking the beginning of fully autonomous operations with the company’s latest and most cost-effective hardware stack.

The announcement, authored by Waymo VP of Engineering Satish Jeyachandran, confirms that the 6th-generation system, first unveiled in August 2024, is now validated for driverless operations across multiple cities. Waymo describes it as the product of seven years of service and nearly 200 million fully autonomous miles logged across 10+ major U.S. cities.

Streamlined hardware, lower cost, broader capability

The 6th-gen Waymo Driver cuts the sensor count dramatically: 13 cameras (down from 29), four lidars (down from five), and six radar units, a 42% reduction in total sensors compared to the 5th-gen system running on the Jaguar I-PACE fleet. Despite the reduction, Waymo claims the new suite delivers greater resolution, range, and compute power.

At the core of the camera system sits a 17-megapixel imager that Waymo says is a generation ahead of other automotive cameras in resolution, dynamic range, and low-light sensitivity. The lidar system leverages industry-wide cost reductions over the past five years, with custom-designed chips and optical components built in California. Short-range lidars provide centimeter-scale accuracy for navigating around pedestrians, car doors, and other urban obstacles.

The entire package is designed for weather resilience with hydrophobic coatings, mechanical cleaning systems, and modular sensor components that can be swapped for specific climate conditions. Waymo has been testing its 6th-gen system in some of the snowiest cities in the country, validating operations in winter weather that the I-PACE fleet was never designed to handle.

The cost reduction is significant. As we reported when Waymo shut down the “can’t scale” argument with its rapid Texas expansion, the 6th-gen Driver is expected to cost less than $20,000 per unit (on top of the vehicle cost), more than a 50% reduction from the 5th-gen system.

Two vehicle platforms, one Driver

Because Waymo builds a Driver, not a vehicle, the 6th-gen system is designed to adapt across platforms. It currently runs on two vehicles: the Zeekr-built “Ojai” minivan, a purpose-built robotaxi with a flat floor, low step-in height, and integrated B-pillar doors, and the Hyundai IONIQ 5.

The Hyundai partnership is scaling fast. Hyundai is reportedly looking to supply Waymo with 50,000 IONIQ 5 units for the robotaxi fleet, a deal that would represent the largest single vehicle order in autonomous driving history. Combined with the Zeekr Ojai vans and a separate Toyota partnership for consumer vehicles, Waymo is diversifying its hardware supply chain in a way no competitor has matched.

Production is ramping at Waymo’s autonomous vehicle factory in Metro Phoenix, where the company says it is scaling toward a capacity of tens of thousands of units per year.

Expansion blitz: 20+ cities in 2026

The 6th-gen rollout arrives during the most aggressive expansion period in Waymo’s history. The company currently operates fully autonomous commercial service in six U.S. cities — Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Atlanta, and Miami, which launched in January. Nashville went fully driverless this week ahead of a planned commercial launch with Lyft later this year.

Waymo plans to open service in Washington, Detroit, Las Vegas, San Diego, Denver, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando in 2026. The company also confirmed its first international markets: London first, then Tokyo.

The numbers back up the ambition. Waymo delivered 15 million rides in 2025 alone — quadrupling its 2024 volume — and surpassed 20 million lifetime rides. The company now provides about 400,000 paid rides per week across its operating cities, and Mawakana says that figure will exceed 1 million by year’s end.

The fleet stands at roughly 2,500 vehicles today. With the Hyundai and Zeekr production pipelines ramping, and the Mesa, Arizona Waymo Driver factory scaling, Waymo has a credible path to the fleet size needed to hit that target.

How it compares to Tesla

The contrast with Tesla’s autonomous ambitions remains stark. Tesla launched its robotaxi service in Austin and San Francisco but still operates most of its service with supervision, with in-car supervisors and trailing safety vehicles, a far cry from Waymo’s fully driverless operations across six cities. Tesla’s per-ride cost is lower ($1.99/km vs. Waymo’s $5.72/km), but wait times are 3-5x longer, and the company has yet to receive SAE Level 4 certification for any vehicle.

Waymo’s safety data is the clearest differentiator. The company reports 90% fewer serious injury-causing crashes and 82% fewer airbag deployments than human drivers across 127 million miles, a dataset no competitor can match. Tesla’s vision-only approach has drawn scrutiny from NHTSA, while Waymo’s multi-modal sensor redundancy has earned regulatory trust in every market it operates.

Electrek’s Take

This is the moment Waymo transitions from a scaling experiment to an actual transportation company. The 6th-gen Driver solves the two problems that critics have hammered for years: cost and weather. Cutting the sensor count by 42% while improving capability directly addresses unit economics, and the sub-$20,000 target for the Driver hardware puts Waymo within striking distance of a sustainable per-ride margin, especially if they can hit their target of 1 million trips per week by the end of the year.

The weather validation is equally important. Waymo’s I-PACE fleet was effectively a warm-weather operation. The 6th-gen system’s testing in snow-heavy cities like Boston, Pittsburgh, and Denver signals that Waymo is serious about operating year-round in the northern half of the country. That opens up markets like Detroit and New York that would have been off-limits with the previous hardware.

We think the Hyundai deal for 50,000 IONIQ 5 units is the most underappreciated part of this story. Waymo went from a single vehicle platform (Jaguar I-PACE for the current gen) to three OEM partnerships in under two years. That kind of supply chain diversification, combined with a $16 billion war chest, makes the path to tens of thousands of vehicles per year look realistic rather than aspirational.

The only real question left is whether Waymo can maintain its safety record as it scales this aggressively.

The main reason why Tesla is not scaling its robotaxi right now is safety rather than cost. Tesla knows that its level of safety can’t scale without supervision, or it will face a company-ending amount of bad press and lawsuits.