Waymo, owned by Alphabet Uncovered On Monday, the autonomous vehicle maker unveiled its sixth-generation Driver system with a more efficient sensor setup. Despite having a smaller number of cameras and LiDAR sensors compared to the current platform, the new autonomous vehicle setup supposedly maintains safety levels. Once it's ready for public travel, it will coexist with the current-generation lineup.
CNBC information that the new system is built into Geely Zeekr electric vehicles. Waymo first said it would work with the Chinese EV maker in late 2021. Vehicles on the new platform are boxier than the current-generation lineup, which is built on the Jaguar I-PACE SUVs. The sixth-generation fleet built by Zeekr is reportedly better for accessibility, including a lower step-in, higher roofline and more legroom, with roughly the same overall footprint as the Jaguar-based lineup.
The sixth-generation Waymo Driver has reduced its number of cameras from 29 to 13 and its LiDAR sensors from five to four. Alphabet says they work together with overlapping fields of view and safety-focused redundancies that allow it to perform better in a variety of weather conditions. The company says the new platform’s field of view extends up to 500 meters (1,640 feet) during the day and night and in “a variety of” weather conditions.
Waymo says the new system has a modular aspect, allowing it to “swap out various sensing components to match the specific conditions of each operating environment,” such as more stringent sensor cleaning for vehicles in colder cities. CNBC He clarified that the cleaning system includes windshield wipers that can remove most of the dirt and moisture.
The company claims the sixth-generation Driver performs reliably even in extreme heat, fog, rain, and hail, thanks to “regular road trips to newer cities.” That makes sense, given that the cities it’s currently approved for are in relatively clear and dry climates.CNBC (Waymo has tested the system in Detroit, Buffalo and New York.) Currently, Waymo only operates in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin. Since launching in 2018, the company’s fleet makes about 50,000 paid autonomous rides a week.
Waymo says the next generation already has thousands of miles of real-world driving experience (and “millions more” in simulations). The company expects it to be ready for consumers sooner than previous models (about half the time) thanks to the system learning from its previous generations’ “shared knowledge.”
