I saw this reposted elsewhere but thought I'd comment here directly and get your feedback if any. I thought your analysis was VERY GOOD.
* The vehicle was originally designed cooperatively with Waymo back in 2020
* The original hard point vehicle was adapted by Zeekr into the Zeekr MIX in 2023
* The MIX is a very high content vehicle and baselines in CHN @ $38K.
* The decontented RT for Waymo is likely significantly less cost perhaps closer to $32-$33K
* The automated seat rails, leather throughout and lounger seats with massage in the back for example are not included
* Furthermore, because of the Biden-era ruling about Russian and Chinese cars, much of the add-on cameras and other tech are also removed
* Waymo applied for a Commerce Dept exemption from the tariffs as a B2B purchase and a hardship since Jaguar plant was torn down. Who knows how that turns out
* You should probably consider the shipping cost to get it to the US from Ningbo. It could get loaded on shipments for Polestar & Volvo which are also Geely properties
* The Zeekr RT is REPORTEDLY plug-n-play
* Not having to do retrofits for wiring, cabling, power, etcetera is the big Kitting reduction
* The designed in drive by wire makes adaptation to Robotaxi service trivial which is a BIG SAVINGS in integration.
Thanks for your comments! This is really interesting, and implies the actual cost to waymo could be a huge overestimate on my end.
The note on this not actually being based on the Zeekr MIX is something I definitely missed in my analysis. So if they can get their tariff exemption, then that would put it at $70k, and it sounds like I may have overestimated the integration cost by good amount as well.
So the Zeekr became the go-to market vehicle for Waymo. Only they would know when all the other todos would predictably converge. The original LiDAR for example was from Velodyne and were $75K full retail on the early FCA Pacificas. Waymo built their instruments thereafter and supposedly reduced the price to $7500 in R1 & closer to $1500 in r2. The bigger challenge was to create a family design that would work on a Semi-truck which they felt needed 500m field of view instead of the taxi 300m. The 'process' for the Pacificas was horrible and very expensive. The Jaguars were hopefully going to be better with involvement of Magna on the original build in Austria and the Kitting plant in Phoenix. Still a bad experience as the vehicles were far from plug n play. More like an RV conversion. Waymo knew what they wanted and couldn't get a custom build in the US. Geely had EV and taxi experience. The plan was great until Biden ban of communication tech on Russian and Chinese vehicles. He also raised the tariffs. The challenge was the vehicle was already done. I presume Waymo for a custom design had to commit to a minimum. Zeekr, to their credit and ingenuity, repurposed the vehicle to make the MIX. If you look online you will find that the RT and the MIX have the exact same height, wheelbase, length and even retained the novel suspension and the steer-by-wire tech (and dynamic B-pillar). The weird look to the ORIGINAL RT design was the double A-pillars for US crash worthiness.
Now one place where the RT was costlier (at least in theory) was the pathways for the sensor pods to the compute. That should have been built into the stampings with cable routing considered. The pods are crazy large especially on the front for the Zeekrs. The pods are designed for natural ventilation, heating, cooling and power for the cleaning systems. All of that wiring and cabling would be a NIGHTMARE. If you look closely at photos of the vehicles at POE you can see the protruding mounts above the vinyl shipping. The cost and time building the Jaguars is all of the cabling, wiring, power routing, etcetera. Supposedly the design was to include all of the cabling from pod to compute so that termination and testing is easy, fast and reliable. I have no knowledge about the compute though. I would guess water-cooled TPUs if that is possible to make it work. It should not be underestimated that EVERY Western LLM is using NVidia for inference except Alphabet. That is why the per token cost is SO MUCH CHEAPER on Gemini. The TPUs are simply a better mousetrap.
The shipping should not be underestimated. A ro-ro ship can transport a vehicle ~$2K China to POE. Gotta move it to Phoenix, do the integration and then get the vehicles to the deployment cities. It all adds up.
This tracks with most of what I've seen as well, but you didn't mention that Waymo's planning to introduce the Zeekr as its Waymo Driver product starting next year. Also, just FYI, the I-Pace has now been formally discontinued: Waymo received its final allotment in May. (I'm unclear how the status of its former factory is related.)
Waymo introduced its replacement, a retrofitted Hyundai Ioniq 5, at CES, but for now I'm assuming it's the vehicle they'll be using in NYC, Philly & all of their newly announced domestic markets, not the Zeekr.
Waymo's definitely seen significant reductions throughout all of its major per-unit expenses (and I know LiDAR in particular has come way down), but OTOH if they're willing & able to produce their own vehicles, that's their call.
The devil's truly in the (regulatory) details, mainly NHTSA's. For some examples: all cars require a seat belt at each seat, along with front and side airbags, antilock brakes & traction control. This may not be necessary for, say, robotaxis that operate as shuttles of a sort within a defined area (e.g. a subdivision or neighborhood). Meanwhile, robotaxis operating on highways will most likely require a similar set of safety features as a standard automobile.
A known-unknown is Trump: Google's still on his enemies list, and his FTC is actively prosecuting them. If he's unwilling to even consider something like NHTSA fast-tracking the Zeekr or waiving applicable tariffs, we may not see it for a while. (OTOH his impetus for granting a waiver may simply be "pissing off Elon," now that their relationship has soured.)
But for now I think we'll be seeing vastly more Ioniqs on the road soon.
The significance of the Magna plant in Graz Austria is the decision to abandon the Jaguar I-Pace program is now irreversible.
The Ioniq 5 design was finalized LONG before HKG became an option for Waymo. Waymo made a deal with HKG in late October just before the election when it became clear 4 years of the orange dude was baked in. It was a covering bet at best. The Foundry program was a big plus but Waymo was customer #1 so the supposed speed of the Hyundai conversion is just a GUESS.
There are ALL SORTS of revisions required to make the vehicle Waymo-ready for the Kitting process in Mesa in conformance with what Geely Zeekr did with their vehicle. It was clear the Ioniq 5 CES show car was plastic show pods and far from a finalized solution. Hard to know how long all that work will actually take. The whole premise of the Zeekr program was to eliminate the very daunting shortcomings of the FCA Pacifica and Jaguar I-Pace programs. The latest stupidity of the BBB will likely be a strong reason for Hyundai to be motivated to incorporate the necessary changes necessary for Waymo. Hopefully stamping operations are not required as those are VERY LONG lead items.
All of the rest of the Trump conjecture is just baked in with a not very smart vindictive guy. Trying to read the tea leaves is probably a waste of brain cycles I am afraid. The NHTSA stuff is already done as the vehicles have already been crash tested and final certified. Zeekr is much more flexible than traditional OEMs. They can even pivot to no steering wheels and pedals but that is in the hands of the FMVSS. The tariffs are a Commerce Dept issue. When and if the Ioniqs become an option complicates the Commerce Dept exemption already in place. The absolute best outcome would be for Geely to provide a final assembly operation at their existing plant in the US and make a deal on tariff relief which would be a BIG WIN for Trump and Waymo. Knockdown kits are a great compromise for all parties.
EDIT: The Zeekr RT will be on the road serving customers in the Waymo One cities this year. I expect them to skip the Uber cities for now as they are just at their original ODD at the initial service area and no cars to speak of. I believe based on the depot in Austin that Uber is splitting their current car allotment between the cities. The mileage reported for the last period in Austin thru 31-MAR-25 are more consistent with 50 cars in Austin. If they had 100 cars in Austin as some low information claims I have heard, the program would be an ABJECT failure in Austin. Even at 50 cars, the daily mileage appears far below trend in the Waymo One cities. The Zeekrs are CRITICAL to the last big Waymo driving challenge which is the full range of weather. The Zeekrs have been in Buffalo NY already doing winter weather testing for example.
I still think that even after autonomous vehicles become commonplace on our roads, there will need to be a tele-operator at a dispatch center that the vehicle can contact when unique situations arise, such as accidents, protestors taking a baseball bat to the vehicle, flooding situations, etc. Perhaps, a single tele-operator can manage a fleet of a couple dozen vehicles. The tele-operator can send commands to the distressed vehicle until normal autonomous operations can resume.
Great post Chris - will give this a feature in my newsletter tomorrow :)
I've been using the $175k all in figure for the cost of the retro-fitted Jaguar I-Pace (5th gen) but I'm guessing the cost of the sensors/lidar/etc has come down since then. So I like your estimate of $75k for the Zeekr. But it sounds like the big question mark is how many of these vehicles have they already ordered/received (without tariffs) and what the cost would look like with tariffs (guessing it would be too high). I see the Zeekrs all over LA and SF though so I'm guessing they may have a few hundred. But they obviously they need a plan to get thousands more.
For comparison, I interviewed an exec from Apollo Go (the China of Waymo doing almost as many weekly paid driverless rides) and they said the latest version of their RT6 costs just $30k. At first, I was shocked and didn't believe it but considering how much the cost of sensors / lidar / radar have come down in the past few years and the huge technical / manufacturing advantage China has built out over the past 5-10 years (great WSJ article on this recently - 'Why Americans Can’t Buy the World’s Best Electric Car'), I think the $30k number is plausible.
Thanks for the kind words! A few replies have brought up ways that my cost estimate might have been notably a bit high - if so I could easily seeing it drop to about $60k on the lower end, although i have a hard time imagining that it goes too much lower than that. Really interesting to hear about the Apollo Go, i have to admit it's a huge blind spot for me, i don't have a good picture of what their system is like. Will have to check out your interview.
Hah i used to work for zoox. Before amazon. It would be interesting to see that, but i have trouble believing they can overcome the lead that waymo and tesla have!
It's going to be tough for anyone that comes after Waymo and Tesla to have a 1P relationship with customers. Customers will already have uber and lyft on their phone, then Waymo and maybe Tesla. No one is going to download Zoox (their 5th app!) just to get an AV when there are other / better options.
Zoox will have to partner with Uber or Lyft to get their product out in the wild, much less maintain high utilization. So I don't see them ever being more than a supplier to demand platforms. But they've raised money and made investments like they are going to take over the world. Could spell trouble..
I am not close to this technology, but the complexities of developing a fully functional AV that can drive on all types of roads in any weather conditions is horrendous. Zoox's five types of merged sensors and their bidirectional vehicle (no backing up) is the way to go. Other companies are taking shortcuts the will hurt them in the long run.
I love how zoox is designing their vehicle to take advantage of its autonomous nature. I do think the real differentiator between companies will end up being software though, so it's hard to say.
I agree. It's the strength of the AI : how well it learns and improves over time. The more input (sensor types) used, the faster and more precisely it understands its surroundings. That's why I like Zoox's five types of sensor inputs. For example, their Thermal sensor will help to differentiate between a standing person and a street side human statue, for example.
I've covered the rideshare space for 11 years, now including Waymo, and know how all the major players are doing. If anything it'd be difficult to understate just how far *ahead* of everyone else that Waymo is. Reason being: good, old-fashioned R&D. (Who'd'a thunk it?) They've been at it since 2007, and had their first fully driverless ride on a public street nearly a decade ago.
Unlike Tesla, they know there's no avoiding the tedious-but-necessary task of mapping LITERALLY every single street in a given area. As for Yoox, they filed for formal – and legally required – NHTSA approvals for their vehicles to be used on US streets a full three years ago. Their complete lack of progress is definitely telling. Last I heard they were still puttering around Vegas, plus Motional landed in Vegas a full seven years ago: it was Lyft's first attempt at robotaxi first. They gave up on it in 2022.
Amazon's obviously one of the few companies big enough to pay for the full R&D cost of Yoox, but there's no avoiding the reality that Waymo's lead in the sector could very well prove impossible to surpass. OTOH Amazon likely has access to a ginormous well of mapping-related data solely from their Prime deliveries via their customized vans made by Rivian, given that they already deliver over a billion packages a year in the US. Still, NHTSA doesn't seem to think they're ready for primetime, at least in a literal pedal-free vehicle.
Thanks Jeff for your comments. I totally agree that Waymo is way ahead of Tesla., and even read that Waymo is developing their own low cost Lidar. Zoox seems to be building their vehicle from the ground up. I was impressed reading about zoox's sensor fusion approach. I have been retired for several years but had a career in the mapping business (sales & marketing). Find it interesting that a remapping of all the roads are required after long gone companies like Etak, Navtech, etc spent so much time GPS mapping roads and capturing map data. I guess Google maps aren't good enough. Again, thanks for your knowledgeable comments.
I agree completely about how far ahead they are, but i do think the less structured/more e2e approaches from wayve and tesla have a shot. Not guaranteed but a shot. Less legacy code
How are you factoring in tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles on the price of Zeekrs? I’m pretty sure the current tariff rate on Chinese EVs is 100%. Wouldn’t that double the cost of the car
Its a good question, and I'm not sure how to factor this in. They might get an exemption, and some amount of these vehicles were already purchased. I think this is the biggest risk factor though for my estimate being too *low* -- if the actual price is higher, I am going to blame tariffs.
Fair enough. In that case I do think your estimate is too low. However, Zeekr owner Geely owns European brands and may be able to shift production to other countries to avoid the 100% tariff (may raise msrp price though). Or, they could sell the cars at a loss and with tariffs still have a very cheap car. E.g., 10k msrp plus 100% tariff = $20k which is still cheap. China has a track record of selling at a loss to gain market share. Though Geely is publicly traded so that may impact its ability to sell for a loss assuming investors would penalize them for it. Idk.
My only quibble with the piece is that prices might still fall quite a bit, even if Waymo were a monopoly (assuming the true cost per mile is a lot lower). Waymo is also in competition with other forms of transit / no transit. Assuming that customers are fairly cost sensitive and Waymo can create as many vehicles as they need in the long run, you'd expect the profit maximizing price (margin x volume) to be significantly lower than it is for existing rideshare.
Yeah i could definitely see costs ending up a lot lower than this per vehicle. Right now customers aren't overly price sensitive- i think the competition is still Uber, and the driverless experience appears worth a premium to many riders.
I saw this reposted elsewhere but thought I'd comment here directly and get your feedback if any. I thought your analysis was VERY GOOD.
* The vehicle was originally designed cooperatively with Waymo back in 2020
* The original hard point vehicle was adapted by Zeekr into the Zeekr MIX in 2023
* The MIX is a very high content vehicle and baselines in CHN @ $38K.
* The decontented RT for Waymo is likely significantly less cost perhaps closer to $32-$33K
* The automated seat rails, leather throughout and lounger seats with massage in the back for example are not included
* Furthermore, because of the Biden-era ruling about Russian and Chinese cars, much of the add-on cameras and other tech are also removed
* Waymo applied for a Commerce Dept exemption from the tariffs as a B2B purchase and a hardship since Jaguar plant was torn down. Who knows how that turns out
* You should probably consider the shipping cost to get it to the US from Ningbo. It could get loaded on shipments for Polestar & Volvo which are also Geely properties
* The Zeekr RT is REPORTEDLY plug-n-play
* Not having to do retrofits for wiring, cabling, power, etcetera is the big Kitting reduction
* The designed in drive by wire makes adaptation to Robotaxi service trivial which is a BIG SAVINGS in integration.
Thanks for your comments! This is really interesting, and implies the actual cost to waymo could be a huge overestimate on my end.
The note on this not actually being based on the Zeekr MIX is something I definitely missed in my analysis. So if they can get their tariff exemption, then that would put it at $70k, and it sounds like I may have overestimated the integration cost by good amount as well.
Maybe $65k per robotaxi then?
So the Zeekr became the go-to market vehicle for Waymo. Only they would know when all the other todos would predictably converge. The original LiDAR for example was from Velodyne and were $75K full retail on the early FCA Pacificas. Waymo built their instruments thereafter and supposedly reduced the price to $7500 in R1 & closer to $1500 in r2. The bigger challenge was to create a family design that would work on a Semi-truck which they felt needed 500m field of view instead of the taxi 300m. The 'process' for the Pacificas was horrible and very expensive. The Jaguars were hopefully going to be better with involvement of Magna on the original build in Austria and the Kitting plant in Phoenix. Still a bad experience as the vehicles were far from plug n play. More like an RV conversion. Waymo knew what they wanted and couldn't get a custom build in the US. Geely had EV and taxi experience. The plan was great until Biden ban of communication tech on Russian and Chinese vehicles. He also raised the tariffs. The challenge was the vehicle was already done. I presume Waymo for a custom design had to commit to a minimum. Zeekr, to their credit and ingenuity, repurposed the vehicle to make the MIX. If you look online you will find that the RT and the MIX have the exact same height, wheelbase, length and even retained the novel suspension and the steer-by-wire tech (and dynamic B-pillar). The weird look to the ORIGINAL RT design was the double A-pillars for US crash worthiness.
Now one place where the RT was costlier (at least in theory) was the pathways for the sensor pods to the compute. That should have been built into the stampings with cable routing considered. The pods are crazy large especially on the front for the Zeekrs. The pods are designed for natural ventilation, heating, cooling and power for the cleaning systems. All of that wiring and cabling would be a NIGHTMARE. If you look closely at photos of the vehicles at POE you can see the protruding mounts above the vinyl shipping. The cost and time building the Jaguars is all of the cabling, wiring, power routing, etcetera. Supposedly the design was to include all of the cabling from pod to compute so that termination and testing is easy, fast and reliable. I have no knowledge about the compute though. I would guess water-cooled TPUs if that is possible to make it work. It should not be underestimated that EVERY Western LLM is using NVidia for inference except Alphabet. That is why the per token cost is SO MUCH CHEAPER on Gemini. The TPUs are simply a better mousetrap.
The shipping should not be underestimated. A ro-ro ship can transport a vehicle ~$2K China to POE. Gotta move it to Phoenix, do the integration and then get the vehicles to the deployment cities. It all adds up.
This tracks with most of what I've seen as well, but you didn't mention that Waymo's planning to introduce the Zeekr as its Waymo Driver product starting next year. Also, just FYI, the I-Pace has now been formally discontinued: Waymo received its final allotment in May. (I'm unclear how the status of its former factory is related.)
Waymo introduced its replacement, a retrofitted Hyundai Ioniq 5, at CES, but for now I'm assuming it's the vehicle they'll be using in NYC, Philly & all of their newly announced domestic markets, not the Zeekr.
Waymo's definitely seen significant reductions throughout all of its major per-unit expenses (and I know LiDAR in particular has come way down), but OTOH if they're willing & able to produce their own vehicles, that's their call.
The devil's truly in the (regulatory) details, mainly NHTSA's. For some examples: all cars require a seat belt at each seat, along with front and side airbags, antilock brakes & traction control. This may not be necessary for, say, robotaxis that operate as shuttles of a sort within a defined area (e.g. a subdivision or neighborhood). Meanwhile, robotaxis operating on highways will most likely require a similar set of safety features as a standard automobile.
A known-unknown is Trump: Google's still on his enemies list, and his FTC is actively prosecuting them. If he's unwilling to even consider something like NHTSA fast-tracking the Zeekr or waiving applicable tariffs, we may not see it for a while. (OTOH his impetus for granting a waiver may simply be "pissing off Elon," now that their relationship has soured.)
But for now I think we'll be seeing vastly more Ioniqs on the road soon.
The significance of the Magna plant in Graz Austria is the decision to abandon the Jaguar I-Pace program is now irreversible.
The Ioniq 5 design was finalized LONG before HKG became an option for Waymo. Waymo made a deal with HKG in late October just before the election when it became clear 4 years of the orange dude was baked in. It was a covering bet at best. The Foundry program was a big plus but Waymo was customer #1 so the supposed speed of the Hyundai conversion is just a GUESS.
There are ALL SORTS of revisions required to make the vehicle Waymo-ready for the Kitting process in Mesa in conformance with what Geely Zeekr did with their vehicle. It was clear the Ioniq 5 CES show car was plastic show pods and far from a finalized solution. Hard to know how long all that work will actually take. The whole premise of the Zeekr program was to eliminate the very daunting shortcomings of the FCA Pacifica and Jaguar I-Pace programs. The latest stupidity of the BBB will likely be a strong reason for Hyundai to be motivated to incorporate the necessary changes necessary for Waymo. Hopefully stamping operations are not required as those are VERY LONG lead items.
All of the rest of the Trump conjecture is just baked in with a not very smart vindictive guy. Trying to read the tea leaves is probably a waste of brain cycles I am afraid. The NHTSA stuff is already done as the vehicles have already been crash tested and final certified. Zeekr is much more flexible than traditional OEMs. They can even pivot to no steering wheels and pedals but that is in the hands of the FMVSS. The tariffs are a Commerce Dept issue. When and if the Ioniqs become an option complicates the Commerce Dept exemption already in place. The absolute best outcome would be for Geely to provide a final assembly operation at their existing plant in the US and make a deal on tariff relief which would be a BIG WIN for Trump and Waymo. Knockdown kits are a great compromise for all parties.
EDIT: The Zeekr RT will be on the road serving customers in the Waymo One cities this year. I expect them to skip the Uber cities for now as they are just at their original ODD at the initial service area and no cars to speak of. I believe based on the depot in Austin that Uber is splitting their current car allotment between the cities. The mileage reported for the last period in Austin thru 31-MAR-25 are more consistent with 50 cars in Austin. If they had 100 cars in Austin as some low information claims I have heard, the program would be an ABJECT failure in Austin. Even at 50 cars, the daily mileage appears far below trend in the Waymo One cities. The Zeekrs are CRITICAL to the last big Waymo driving challenge which is the full range of weather. The Zeekrs have been in Buffalo NY already doing winter weather testing for example.
I still think that even after autonomous vehicles become commonplace on our roads, there will need to be a tele-operator at a dispatch center that the vehicle can contact when unique situations arise, such as accidents, protestors taking a baseball bat to the vehicle, flooding situations, etc. Perhaps, a single tele-operator can manage a fleet of a couple dozen vehicles. The tele-operator can send commands to the distressed vehicle until normal autonomous operations can resume.
I agree with this. Hopefully rarer and rarer over time but there will always be a human theu can dial for help.
Great post Chris - will give this a feature in my newsletter tomorrow :)
I've been using the $175k all in figure for the cost of the retro-fitted Jaguar I-Pace (5th gen) but I'm guessing the cost of the sensors/lidar/etc has come down since then. So I like your estimate of $75k for the Zeekr. But it sounds like the big question mark is how many of these vehicles have they already ordered/received (without tariffs) and what the cost would look like with tariffs (guessing it would be too high). I see the Zeekrs all over LA and SF though so I'm guessing they may have a few hundred. But they obviously they need a plan to get thousands more.
For comparison, I interviewed an exec from Apollo Go (the China of Waymo doing almost as many weekly paid driverless rides) and they said the latest version of their RT6 costs just $30k. At first, I was shocked and didn't believe it but considering how much the cost of sensors / lidar / radar have come down in the past few years and the huge technical / manufacturing advantage China has built out over the past 5-10 years (great WSJ article on this recently - 'Why Americans Can’t Buy the World’s Best Electric Car'), I think the $30k number is plausible.
Thanks for the kind words! A few replies have brought up ways that my cost estimate might have been notably a bit high - if so I could easily seeing it drop to about $60k on the lower end, although i have a hard time imagining that it goes too much lower than that. Really interesting to hear about the Apollo Go, i have to admit it's a huge blind spot for me, i don't have a good picture of what their system is like. Will have to check out your interview.
Although Waymo and Tesla are first out of the shoot, I predict that Amazon's Zoox will overtake both, once their vehicles start hitting the road.
Hah i used to work for zoox. Before amazon. It would be interesting to see that, but i have trouble believing they can overcome the lead that waymo and tesla have!
It's going to be tough for anyone that comes after Waymo and Tesla to have a 1P relationship with customers. Customers will already have uber and lyft on their phone, then Waymo and maybe Tesla. No one is going to download Zoox (their 5th app!) just to get an AV when there are other / better options.
Zoox will have to partner with Uber or Lyft to get their product out in the wild, much less maintain high utilization. So I don't see them ever being more than a supplier to demand platforms. But they've raised money and made investments like they are going to take over the world. Could spell trouble..
I am not close to this technology, but the complexities of developing a fully functional AV that can drive on all types of roads in any weather conditions is horrendous. Zoox's five types of merged sensors and their bidirectional vehicle (no backing up) is the way to go. Other companies are taking shortcuts the will hurt them in the long run.
I love how zoox is designing their vehicle to take advantage of its autonomous nature. I do think the real differentiator between companies will end up being software though, so it's hard to say.
I agree. It's the strength of the AI : how well it learns and improves over time. The more input (sensor types) used, the faster and more precisely it understands its surroundings. That's why I like Zoox's five types of sensor inputs. For example, their Thermal sensor will help to differentiate between a standing person and a street side human statue, for example.
I've covered the rideshare space for 11 years, now including Waymo, and know how all the major players are doing. If anything it'd be difficult to understate just how far *ahead* of everyone else that Waymo is. Reason being: good, old-fashioned R&D. (Who'd'a thunk it?) They've been at it since 2007, and had their first fully driverless ride on a public street nearly a decade ago.
Unlike Tesla, they know there's no avoiding the tedious-but-necessary task of mapping LITERALLY every single street in a given area. As for Yoox, they filed for formal – and legally required – NHTSA approvals for their vehicles to be used on US streets a full three years ago. Their complete lack of progress is definitely telling. Last I heard they were still puttering around Vegas, plus Motional landed in Vegas a full seven years ago: it was Lyft's first attempt at robotaxi first. They gave up on it in 2022.
Amazon's obviously one of the few companies big enough to pay for the full R&D cost of Yoox, but there's no avoiding the reality that Waymo's lead in the sector could very well prove impossible to surpass. OTOH Amazon likely has access to a ginormous well of mapping-related data solely from their Prime deliveries via their customized vans made by Rivian, given that they already deliver over a billion packages a year in the US. Still, NHTSA doesn't seem to think they're ready for primetime, at least in a literal pedal-free vehicle.
Thanks Jeff for your comments. I totally agree that Waymo is way ahead of Tesla., and even read that Waymo is developing their own low cost Lidar. Zoox seems to be building their vehicle from the ground up. I was impressed reading about zoox's sensor fusion approach. I have been retired for several years but had a career in the mapping business (sales & marketing). Find it interesting that a remapping of all the roads are required after long gone companies like Etak, Navtech, etc spent so much time GPS mapping roads and capturing map data. I guess Google maps aren't good enough. Again, thanks for your knowledgeable comments.
I agree completely about how far ahead they are, but i do think the less structured/more e2e approaches from wayve and tesla have a shot. Not guaranteed but a shot. Less legacy code
How are you factoring in tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles on the price of Zeekrs? I’m pretty sure the current tariff rate on Chinese EVs is 100%. Wouldn’t that double the cost of the car
Its a good question, and I'm not sure how to factor this in. They might get an exemption, and some amount of these vehicles were already purchased. I think this is the biggest risk factor though for my estimate being too *low* -- if the actual price is higher, I am going to blame tariffs.
Fair enough. In that case I do think your estimate is too low. However, Zeekr owner Geely owns European brands and may be able to shift production to other countries to avoid the 100% tariff (may raise msrp price though). Or, they could sell the cars at a loss and with tariffs still have a very cheap car. E.g., 10k msrp plus 100% tariff = $20k which is still cheap. China has a track record of selling at a loss to gain market share. Though Geely is publicly traded so that may impact its ability to sell for a loss assuming investors would penalize them for it. Idk.
My only quibble with the piece is that prices might still fall quite a bit, even if Waymo were a monopoly (assuming the true cost per mile is a lot lower). Waymo is also in competition with other forms of transit / no transit. Assuming that customers are fairly cost sensitive and Waymo can create as many vehicles as they need in the long run, you'd expect the profit maximizing price (margin x volume) to be significantly lower than it is for existing rideshare.
Yeah i could definitely see costs ending up a lot lower than this per vehicle. Right now customers aren't overly price sensitive- i think the competition is still Uber, and the driverless experience appears worth a premium to many riders.
Although Waymo and Tesla are first out of the shoot, I predict that Amazon's Zoox will overtake both, once their vehicles start hitting the road.