A Robotaxi Future Is Heading Your Way–Inside The Waymo Factory

Forbes

An exclusive look inside the facility turning Jaguar EVs into robotaxis with the AI-driven fleet’s custom computing system, cameras, lidar and radar. Soon, tens of thousands of robotaxis will be rolling off the line annually.  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2025/05/05/inside-the-waymo-factory-building-a-robotaxi-future/  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00Today on Forbes, inside the Waymo factory building a robo-taxi future.

00:07Step outside the main terminal at Phoenix's Sky Harbor Airport to the ride-share zone on a hot

00:12spring day and you'll catch a glimpse of a fast-approaching future. Driverless Waymo

00:18robo-taxis queuing alongside human-driven Ubers and Lyfts to take waiting passengers to their

00:23next destination. The service just launched in Austin and continues to expand in San Francisco,

00:29Los Angeles, and Silicon Valley, but Phoenix has been its home turf for years, kicking off paid

00:36public rides there in 2020. And now, the region that helped perfect the AI-enabled tech has quietly

00:43become Waymo's robo-taxi production hub. About 20 minutes east of Phoenix's airport in Mesa, Arizona,

00:50is a 239,000-square-foot factory that opened in October. Every day, it turns out several battery-powered

00:58white Jaguar I-PACE electric SUVs loaded up with the company's custom-designed computer,

01:05cameras, radar, and laser LiDAR sensors on a single production line. But the plan is to

01:11dramatically scale up the pace and automate output to keep up with growth plans. This,

01:17according to Kent Yu, Waymo's head of vehicle manufacturing, who previously managed production

01:22operations for Apple and General Motors. Yu told Forbes that this facility will, quote,

01:28need to be capable of doing tens of thousands per year. That production scale is small compared to

01:34traditional auto plants that make hundreds of thousands of vehicles a year. But the 1,500 robo-taxis

01:39Waymo has provide more than 250,000 paid rides a week, or about 24 a day per vehicle, vastly more than

01:48personal cars and trucks that are driven only a few times a day. And by the time the Mesa factory

01:53gets 10,000 Waymos on the road, the fleet could be booking 250,000 rides a day. That's well over

02:001.5 million a week. At that scale, Waymo's annual revenue could jump to $2 billion, up from a Forbes

02:08estimate of $100 million last year. The company declined to comment on those estimates.

02:13The multi-million dollar Mesa facility – Waymo won't say exactly how much it's investing – is

02:20vital to the Alphabet Inc. unit's growth goals. After years of testing and pilot programs stretching

02:27back to 2009, powered by three funding rounds that raised over $11 billion, not to mention the

02:34untold billions more Google poured into the program between 2009 and 2020, Waymo finally became a real

02:41business last year. In 2024, it expanded paid rides from its Phoenix operations to San Francisco and

02:48Los Angeles, followed by Austin in March. And as it keeps building up in those cities, adding more

02:54vehicles and covering even larger service areas, it's preparing to launch this summer in Atlanta

02:59and in Miami and Washington DC next year. Meanwhile, Waymo is also testing in Nashville and Tokyo. If those

03:07cities are as viable as those it currently operates in, the company could soon be carrying millions of

03:12passengers weekly, if not daily. After nearly 16 years, Alphabet's big bet may finally pay off.

03:21Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has said there's also the possibility of licensing the technology

03:26for use in personal vehicles. Last week, Waymo took a step toward doing that by announcing a

03:32partnership with Toyota to design a next-generation vehicle platform for autonomous cars and trucks,

03:37as well as to study how to use Waymo's system in personal vehicles.

03:42The factory is run with Magna, a leading auto engineering and manufacturing company that

03:47produced the Jaguar I-Pace Waymo uses at its Graz Austria plant. It replaces a smaller Detroit

03:54assembly facility Waymo opened in 2019, also with Magna, and closed at the end of 2024.

04:01Inside the cavernous space, there are no conveyor belts or loud metal stamping you'd see at

04:06traditional assembly plants. The work pace is steady but not high volume. Raw cars roll into the building

04:13at one end with plastic covers on the body panels over pre-cut sections where sensors will be installed.

04:18They enter a manual assembly line where dozens of workers remove those covers, bumpers,

04:24and other exterior components to begin the process of carefully installing an electrical wire harness,

04:29computers, sensors on each corner of the vehicle, and Waymo's telltale so-called top hat unit,

04:36housing the main laser lidar for 3D vision, multiple cameras, and audio sensors.

04:42For full coverage, check out Alan Owensman's piece on Forbes.com.

04:48This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.

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