There’s a new autonomous vehicle (AV) in town: Waymo is launching a specially configured robotaxi, a few of which are circling the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. The original Waymos are Jaguar I-PACE luxury SUVs with an added sensor stack including cameras, LiDAR, and radars. The new vehicles, which look like snub-nosed minivans, are made by Chinese auto manufacturer Geely on its Zeekr platform. Waymo then adds the sensor stack. There are more than 100 in the fleet, compared with thousands of I-PACEs. "The technology that collects data and makes our vehicles autonomous—the software, sensors, and computing systems—is developed in the US. Waymo installs the autonomous driving technology on stripped-down, disconnected OEM-provided vehicles in our Arizona manufacturing facility,” says Sandy Karp, a Waymo spokesperson and my tour guide on a recent ride. (Last year, the US banned most Chinese and Russian connected-car tech.) Waymo calls the finished product Ojai. It’s a city in Southern California, but no doubt a playful reference to the pronunciation of "oh, hi!" Its parent company, Alphabet, generally doesn’t have a sense of humor in its product naming, but its subsidiary, Google, did recently launch an AI image-generation product called Nano Banana. When Karp pulled up in my purple chariot, she asked where I wanted to go. San Francisco’s famously twisty Lombard Street, of course! Unfortunately, we couldn’t do that. Waymos are designed to take the fastest route, and eight switchbacks with tourists driving down in awe of San Francisco at 5mph will never be that. Functional Upgrades Over Luxury The first thing I noticed is that the sensors are better integrated into the Ojai. On the I-PACE, it looks like someone added a crown to a Jaguar. (Which is exactly what they did.) Waymo has optimized costs by reducing the number of