What Car Does Waymo Use? Every Vehicle In The Robotaxi Fleet

Here is something most people do not realize when a driverless car glides past them in Phoenix or San Francisco: the vehicle underneath all that spinning sensor hardware started life as an ordinary car you could have bought at a dealership. If you have ever watched one of those white SUVs roll by and wondered what car does Waymo use, the answer is simpler than you might expect, and far more interesting once you dig into the details. Waymo does not build cars from scratch. Instead, it partners with established automakers, buys their vehicles, and then rebuilds them into fully autonomous robotaxis.

That partnership model shapes everything about how Waymo operates, from how fast it can expand into new cities to how much each ride costs. Understanding which vehicles the company uses tells you a lot about where self-driving technology stands today and where it is headed next. In this guide, you will learn about every car Waymo has deployed or announced, the sensor hardware bolted onto each one, why the company retired its earlier models, how the fleet compares to rivals like Tesla and Zoox, and what riders actually experience when they climb into the back seat.

The Vehicles Behind Waymo’s Driverless Fleet

Waymo builds its robotaxis on top of production vehicles from major automakers rather than manufacturing its own cars. Today, the backbone of Waymo’s commercial fleet is the all-electric Jaguar I-PACE, a compact luxury SUV that the company has fitted with its fifth-generation driver hardware, while newer vehicles including the Zeekr RT and the Hyundai Ioniq 5 are joining the lineup with sixth-generation sensors. The earlier Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivan carried the service through its first driverless years and has now been phased out of regular passenger operations.

This approach makes practical sense. Designing and certifying a brand-new car costs billions of dollars and takes years. By starting with a vehicle that already passed crash testing, emissions rules, and durability validation, Waymo can pour its money and engineering time into the part it actually cares about: the software and sensors that replace a human driver. The automaker handles the wheels, brakes, seats, and safety cage. Waymo handles the brain.

Still, these are not stock cars. Every vehicle that joins the fleet goes through heavy modification. Engineers add redundant braking systems, backup steering motors, secondary power supplies, and a computing platform that can process sensor data in milliseconds. If the primary system fails mid-drive, a second one takes over and brings the car to a safe stop. That redundancy is the reason a Waymo can operate with no human behind the wheel at all.

Here is a quick snapshot of the vehicles that have carried the Waymo name:

Jaguar I-PACE – the current workhorse, all-electric, used across Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and beyond
Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid – the minivan that launched public driverless rides, retired from passenger service
Zeekr RT – a purpose-built electric van designed with autonomy in mind
Hyundai Ioniq 5 – announced as a future fleet addition with sixth-generation hardware
Toyota partnership – an agreement aimed at bringing autonomy to personally owned vehicles
Firefly – the small, retired prototype pod that had no steering wheel at all

Inside the Jaguar I-PACE, Waymo’s Signature Robotaxi

When someone posts a photo of a Waymo online, chances are they photographed a Jaguar I-PACE. Waymo announced its partnership with Jaguar Land Rover in 2018 with a plan to add up to 20,000 of the electric SUVs to its fleet. The I-PACE became the first premium electric vehicle adapted for fully autonomous ride-hailing, and it remains the vehicle most riders encounter.

The choice was deliberate. The I-PACE runs on a battery-electric powertrain with roughly 90 kilowatt-hours of capacity and an EPA range in the neighborhood of 230 to 240 miles. For a robotaxi that spends its day making short urban trips and returns to a depot for charging, that range works well. The car also uses a skateboard-style battery layout that lowers the center of gravity, which helps the vehicle stay planted during the smooth, predictable maneuvers the software prefers.

What Waymo Changes on the Jaguar

The modifications go far deeper than mounting a sensor pod on the roof. Waymo works with Jaguar engineers to build in what the industry calls a redundant vehicle platform. Think of it as a car with two of everything that matters.

A secondary braking system that activates if the primary hydraulic system loses pressure
Backup steering actuation so the car can still change lanes and pull over safely
Dual power supplies feeding the computers and sensors independently
A reinforced electrical architecture that supports the constant draw of lidar, radar, and cameras
Custom cooling for the onboard compute stack, which generates real heat during operation
Interior changes including rear passenger screens, extra climate controls, and a button panel for starting and stopping the ride

The Passenger Experience

Riders sit only in the back. The front seats stay empty, and the steering wheel turns on its own, which surprises almost everyone on their first trip. Each rear seat area gets its own display where you can see the car’s route, adjust music, and press a button to pull over. The screens also show a simplified version of what the car perceives, with other vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists rendered as moving shapes. That visualization does more for rider confidence than any marketing campaign, because it proves the car sees what you see.

One practical scenario shows why the I-PACE works so well for this job. Imagine a rider requests a trip across San Francisco during evening rush hour. The route involves steep hills, double-parked delivery trucks, unprotected left turns, and a cyclist weaving between lanes. The instant torque of the electric motors lets the car pull away smoothly from a stop on a hill without rolling back, while the low battery placement keeps the ride stable through tight turns. A gas-powered sedan would handle the trip too, but with more vibration, more noise, and more mechanical complexity to maintain across a fleet running 20 hours a day.

The Chrysler Pacifica Era and Why It Ended

Before the Jaguars arrived, Waymo built its reputation on a minivan. In 2016, the company partnered with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles to modify Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans, eventually building a fleet of roughly 600 vehicles. Those minivans carried the first members of the public who ever rode in a car with no safety driver, starting in the Phoenix suburbs in 2017 and expanding into a public commercial service in 2018.

The Pacifica made sense for that stage of the program. Minivans offer enormous interior space, sliding doors that open in tight parking spots, and a tall roofline that gives sensors a better vantage point. Families could fit comfortably, luggage went in easily, and the plug-in hybrid powertrain meant the vehicle could keep operating even when charging infrastructure was thin.

So why retire them? Several forces pushed Waymo toward newer vehicles:

Hardware generation gap – the Pacificas carried fourth and fifth generation sensors, while newer platforms support cheaper and more capable hardware
Full electrification – the hybrid powertrain still burned gasoline, which conflicted with the goal of a zero-emission fleet
Fleet aging – many of those minivans accumulated enormous mileage during years of testing and commercial service
Supply chain changes – the partnership with Stellantis, the company that absorbed Fiat Chrysler, shifted priorities over time
Maintenance economics – electric drivetrains have far fewer moving parts, which cuts service costs across a large fleet

Waymo formally wound down passenger operations with the Pacifica fleet, and by the middle of the decade the minivans had largely disappeared from public streets. Some were retained for testing or repurposed, but the era of the white Waymo minivan is essentially over. It is worth remembering, though, that those vehicles logged the miles that made everything after them possible.

New Vehicles Joining the Lineup: Zeekr RT, Hyundai Ioniq 5, and Toyota

Waymo’s fleet is not standing still. The company has announced several new vehicle partnerships, each targeting a different need. Understanding these upcoming models answers the natural follow-up question people ask after learning what car does Waymo use today.

The Zeekr RT

Zeekr is an electric vehicle brand owned by Geely, the Chinese automotive group that also owns Volvo and Polestar. The Zeekr RT is a battery-electric multi-purpose vehicle designed from the ground up with ride-hailing in mind. It features a flat floor, sliding doors, generous headroom, and a body shape that accommodates sensor mounting without awkward add-ons.

Waymo fits the RT with its sixth-generation Waymo Driver, a hardware suite that uses fewer sensors while covering more ground. The company has stated that this generation cuts sensor costs significantly compared to the fifth generation while improving performance in fog, rain, and other tough conditions. Trade policy and tariffs on Chinese-built vehicles have complicated the rollout timeline, and Waymo has continued testing the platform while working through those issues.

The Hyundai Ioniq 5

In late 2024, Waymo and Hyundai announced a multi-year partnership centered on the Ioniq 5, an all-electric crossover built on Hyundai’s E-GMP platform. Vehicles for the Waymo fleet come from Hyundai’s Metaplant facility in Georgia, which matters for both supply reliability and tariff exposure. The Ioniq 5 offers 800-volt charging architecture, meaning it can add substantial range in well under half an hour, a meaningful advantage for a vehicle that needs to spend its time earning fares rather than sitting at a charger.

The Toyota Agreement

Waymo’s arrangement with Toyota points in a different direction entirely. Rather than adding another robotaxi model, the two companies are exploring how to bring autonomous driving technology into personally owned vehicles. That would mean the Waymo Driver eventually appearing in cars people buy and park in their own driveways, not just in fleet vehicles summoned through an app.

Vehicle	Type	Powertrain	Waymo Driver Generation	Status
Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid	Minivan	Plug-in hybrid	4th and 5th	Retired from passenger service
Jaguar I-PACE	Compact SUV	Battery electric	5th	Primary active fleet
Zeekr RT	Electric MPV	Battery electric	6th	Testing and phased rollout
Hyundai Ioniq 5	Crossover	Battery electric	6th	Announced, entering testing
Firefly prototype	Low-speed pod	Battery electric	Early generations	Retired, museum piece

The Waymo Driver: Sensors, Computers, and How It All Works

The car itself is only half the story. What turns a Jaguar I-PACE into a robotaxi is the Waymo Driver, the combined package of sensors, computers, and software that handles perception, prediction, and driving decisions. Waymo designs most of this hardware in house, which lets it tune each component for its specific needs rather than settling for off-the-shelf parts.

The Sensor Suite

Waymo relies on three complementary sensor types, and the overlap between them is the entire point. When one struggles, another compensates.

Lidar – laser scanners that build a precise three-dimensional map of the surroundings, accurate to the centimeter, working equally well in daylight and total darkness
Radar – radio-wave sensors that measure the speed and distance of objects and cut through rain, fog, and dust that would blind a camera
Cameras – high-resolution vision systems that read traffic lights, brake lights, construction signs, hand signals from police officers, and lane markings
External microphones – audio receivers that detect sirens from emergency vehicles before those vehicles come into view

The fifth-generation system on the I-PACE uses a large rooftop dome housing a long-range lidar and a 360-degree camera array, plus perimeter sensors mounted at the front, rear, and corners. That top lidar can detect objects more than 300 meters away, which gives the car time to react to a stopped vehicle far down a highway. The sixth generation trims the sensor count from roughly 29 units to about 13 while extending capability, largely thanks to better software and more capable individual components.

How a Ride Actually Works

Follow the process from the moment you tap the app:

You request a ride, and Waymo assigns the nearest available vehicle from its depot or from a car already circulating nearby
The car navigates to your pickup point using a detailed prior map combined with live sensor data
You unlock the doors from the app, get in the back, and press the start button on the screen
The Waymo Driver identifies every object around it, predicts where each one will move over the next several seconds, and plans a path accordingly
Throughout the trip, remote fleet response specialists can offer guidance if the car encounters something confusing, though they do not take over the controls in the way a joystick operator would
The car pulls over at a legal, safe drop-off spot, unlocks, and heads to its next assignment or back to a charging depot

Waymo has published safety data based on tens of millions of driverless miles, reporting large reductions in airbag-deployment crashes and injury-causing collisions compared with human benchmark drivers in the same cities. Those figures come from the company itself and get scrutinized by outside researchers, but the general pattern of fewer severe crashes has held up across multiple independent reviews.

Waymo Vehicles Compared With Tesla, Zoox, and Other Rivals

People often ask what car does Waymo use specifically because they want to compare it against something else they have seen or read about. The hardware choices reveal deep philosophical differences between companies.

Waymo Versus Tesla

Tesla builds its own cars and equips them with cameras only, arguing that vision plus neural networks can match or beat human driving without lidar or radar. Waymo takes the opposite view, layering multiple sensor types so that no single failure mode can blind the vehicle. Tesla’s advantage is cost and scale, since it manufactures millions of vehicles. Waymo’s advantage is that its cars already operate with no human in the driver’s seat, carrying paying passengers, in multiple cities.

Waymo Versus Zoox

Zoox, owned by Amazon, went the purpose-built route. Its vehicle has no steering wheel, no front or back in the traditional sense, and seats passengers facing each other in a carriage-style layout. That design allows a better use of interior space, but it required a lengthy regulatory path since no existing safety standards covered a car without driver controls. Waymo sidestepped that problem by using conventional vehicles that already meet federal standards.

Company	Vehicle Approach	Sensor Strategy	Driver Controls
Waymo	Modified production cars from partners	Lidar, radar, cameras, microphones	Retained but unused
Tesla	Self-manufactured vehicles	Cameras only	Full driver controls
Zoox	Purpose-built robotaxi	Lidar, radar, cameras	None
Cruise	Modified Chevrolet Bolt, Origin concept	Lidar, radar, cameras	Retained on Bolt
May Mobility	Modified Toyota Sienna	Lidar, radar, cameras	Retained

The comparison matters because it shows there is no single right answer yet. Waymo’s method gets vehicles on the road quickly and legally. Purpose-built designs may eventually deliver better economics and roomier interiors. Camera-only systems could scale faster if the software ever reaches the necessary reliability. Each company is placing a different bet, and riders benefit from watching those bets play out.

Common Misconceptions About Waymo’s Cars

A lot of confident-sounding claims about Waymo vehicles circulate online, and many of them are simply wrong. Clearing these up helps you understand what you are actually looking at when one drives past.

Waymo Does Not Manufacture Its Own Cars

The most common mistake is assuming Waymo builds vehicles the way Tesla does. It does not. Waymo is a technology company under Alphabet, the same parent company as Google. It buys vehicles from automakers, then adds its own hardware at dedicated facilities. Waymo does operate a factory in Mesa, Arizona, in partnership with Magna, but that plant integrates the autonomous system into vehicles rather than building cars from raw steel.

The Cars Are Not Remote Controlled

Another persistent myth holds that a person sits in a control room somewhere steering each car with a game controller. That is not how it works. The Waymo Driver makes its own decisions in real time. Remote human specialists can answer the vehicle’s questions when it encounters an unusual situation, such as a construction zone with confusing cones, but they provide guidance rather than direct control. The car still drives itself.

Other Myths Worth Correcting

“Waymo only uses one type of car” – the fleet has always included multiple models, and it is growing more varied
“Any Jaguar I-PACE can become a Waymo” – the fleet vehicles come off a special production line with redundant systems built in from the factory
“The sensors are just for show” – the rooftop dome contains real lidar and camera hardware that the car depends on constantly
“You can buy a Waymo car” – the vehicles are not for sale to consumers, though the Toyota partnership hints at a future where the technology reaches personal cars
“Waymo cars cannot handle rain or snow” – the fleet operates in rain routinely and has run winter testing programs in cities like Buffalo and Detroit, though heavy snow service remains limited

Here is a real-world example that clears up the remote-control myth. During a busy event letting out downtown, a Waymo vehicle encountered a crowd spilling into the street around a stalled delivery truck. The car stopped, evaluated the scene, and waited. It did not need a human to hit the brakes, because stopping was its own decision. What a remote specialist might add in that moment is confirmation that the truck ahead is parked permanently rather than about to move, letting the car choose to route around it. That is a suggestion, not a steering input.

Riding in a Waymo: Practical Tips and What to Expect

Knowing which car will pick you up is useful, but knowing how to make the ride go smoothly matters more day to day. These tips come from the patterns riders report most often.

Set your pickup spot carefully. The app suggests locations where the car can legally stop. Fighting that suggestion usually costs you time, because the vehicle will not double-park in a travel lane.
Use the app to unlock. The doors stay locked until you tap unlock or the car recognizes your approach. Pulling on a locked handle does nothing.
Everyone rides in back. The front seats stay off limits. Plan for that if you travel with a group, since capacity is smaller than the vehicle looks.
Press start when ready. The car waits for you. It will not move until someone confirms the ride has begun.
Handle luggage yourself. There is no driver to load bags. The I-PACE trunk fits a couple of suitcases, and the newer vans offer more room.
Use the pull-over button if you need it. Each screen has one, and support staff are reachable through the app with a single tap.

Comfort-wise, the ride feels notably smooth. The software accelerates and brakes gradually, keeps generous following distances, and takes turns at conservative speeds. Some riders find it slightly slower than an aggressive human driver on the same route, and that is by design. The car optimizes for predictability, not speed records.

Cost sits roughly in line with standard ride-hailing prices in most markets, sometimes a bit higher during peak demand. Waymo prices trips through its own app and, in some cities, through partner platforms like Uber, where a rider requesting a standard trip may be offered a driverless vehicle at no extra charge.

Accessibility and Special Needs

Waymo has built accessibility features into its service, including screen reader support, audio cues that help riders with visual impairments locate the vehicle, and a horn-honk feature that helps identify the right car. Wheelchair-accessible options remain limited compared to the general fleet, which is one reason purpose-built vans like the Zeekr RT matter for the future. Their flat floors and sliding doors make ramp integration far easier than a low-slung SUV allows.

Where the Fleet Goes From Here

The vehicle lineup will keep changing, and the direction of that change tells you what Waymo is optimizing for. Three trends stand out.

First, cost reduction drives nearly every decision. Sixth-generation hardware uses fewer sensors and cheaper components while covering more situations. Every dollar cut from the per-vehicle build cost improves the economics of the entire business, since a robotaxi only becomes profitable when the vehicle plus hardware costs less than the fares it collects over its lifetime. Analysts have estimated earlier-generation Waymo builds at well over one hundred thousand dollars per vehicle including hardware, and driving that figure down is the whole game.

Second, geographic expansion demands vehicle variety. A car that works beautifully in Phoenix sunshine may need different tuning for Detroit winters or Miami downpours. Waymo has been testing in dozens of cities across the country, including places with real snow, and the sensor packages have to prove themselves in each environment. Expect the fleet to include more vehicle types as the service map grows into airports, freeways, and colder climates.

Third, the technology may eventually leave the fleet entirely. The Toyota partnership signals interest in licensing the Waymo Driver for personally owned vehicles. If that happens, the question of what car Waymo uses becomes less about a specific fleet and more about which automakers install the system. That would be a major shift, moving Waymo from an operator of cars to a supplier of autonomy.

Watch for these signals as the industry develops:

Announcements of new automaker partnerships beyond Jaguar, Zeekr, Hyundai, and Toyota
Regulatory approvals for freeway and airport operations in additional states
Wheelchair-accessible vehicle deployments at meaningful scale
Sensor cost disclosures or teardown analyses that reveal build economics
Expansion into cities with sustained winter weather
Any move toward selling or licensing the driver system for consumer vehicles

So when someone asks what car does Waymo use, the honest answer covers a short history and an evolving present. The Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivan proved that ordinary people would ride in a car with nobody in the driver’s seat. The Jaguar I-PACE turned that proof into a real commercial service across multiple cities, wrapped in an all-electric package with fifth-generation sensors. Now the Zeekr RT and Hyundai Ioniq 5 are arriving with cheaper, smarter sixth-generation hardware, while the Toyota agreement hints at autonomy spreading into cars people own themselves.

What ties all of it together is the Waymo Driver, the sensor and software package that does the actual driving no matter which body it rides in. The car is the container. The technology inside is the product. As costs fall and the fleet diversifies, driverless rides will reach more neighborhoods, more weather conditions, and more people who cannot drive themselves. Next time one of those sensor-topped vehicles rolls past you, you will know exactly what you are looking at, and you will have a pretty good idea of what is coming next.