Waymo has begun welcoming public riders to its new Ojai vehicle in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles, marking the public debut of its sixth-generation Waymo Driver autonomous system. The vehicle will expand to Denver, Las Vegas, and San Diego later this year, as Waymo scales its Mesa, Arizona factory toward a capacity of tens of thousands of vehicles. Rides across the three launch cities are being offered free of charge through a Trusted Tester programme, following several months of internal employee testing. The sixth-generation Waymo Driver makes its debut in the Ojai, with the system designed to extend commercial operations into cities with snowier conditions than its predecessor could serve. The Waymo Driver has logged more than 20 million fully autonomous trips across more than 11 cities to date. The cabin features elevator-style doors, a flat floor, and three configurable LED screens. Accessibility provisions, including embedded Braille, screen-reader compatibility, and a seat-integrated boarding handle, are incorporated into the vehicle’s design rather than retrofitted. The Ojai was developed with input from riders and community partners, with Waymo indicating it plans to introduce additional in-ride features progressively. The company said it will open access to a broader public and expand to further cities throughout the remainder of the year. Why this matters: - Sixth-generation capability lifts the geographic constraint on AV expansion. The Waymo Driver’s new capacity to operate in snowier conditions directly addresses the structural factor that has kept autonomous ride-hailing concentrated in warm-weather markets. Denver’s presence among the initial expansion cities is notable: the city experiences significant winter snowfall, and its inclusion suggests the sixth-generation system enables a genuine national rollout rather than a further extension of the Sunbelt-focused footprint. - Mesa factory target marks a new threshold for AV production economics. Waymo’s commitment to scale toward tens of