Paving the way toward a fully electric ride-hailing fleet

In late April, we will deploy the Jaguar I-PACE and our fifth-generation Waymo Driver in the Phoenix East Valley, making our entire Waymo One ride-hailing fleet fully electric. We’ll retire the previous-generation Waymo Driver from our service, as we have done with similar platforms in the past.

With this fleet update, we are also proud to join the White House EV Acceleration Challenge to support the administration’s efforts in this historic transition to electric vehicles. For many, hailing a fully autonomous ride with Waymo may be the easiest way to access an EV. Our growing ride-hailing service not only increases sustainable transportation options, but also offers Waymo’s safety benefits to the communities we serve.

Electric vehicles like the I-PACE generate less carbon emissions than their gas counterparts, but with the average vehicle in the U.S. parked 95% of the time, their full benefits are often unrealized. We believe that autonomous EVs efficiently driven around the clock can maximize those environmental benefits with a significantly higher vehicle utilization. Taking it a step further, our EV fleet is matched with 100% renewable energy, which enables us to provide a zero-emission ride-hailing service to our customers.

We also work closely with city leaders and community groups to plan for cities of the future. An efficiently deployed Waymo One service working with other shared mobility can help repurpose parking, complement existing transit options, improve pedestrian safety and reduce localized emissions, ultimately helping cities and streets be designed more for people and less for cars.

Focusing our service on an all I-PACE fleet helps us better optimize our technical and operational support to be more efficient in the near term as we prepare future vehicles like the ZEEKR mobility platform. Our machine learning-based fifth-generation Waymo Driver learns more with every mile traveled, so deploying our existing I-PACE fleet into the East Valley will only further advance the performance and reliability of the Driver as we continue to scale.

The East Valley – primarily Chandler, Tempe and Mesa, AZ – have played a critical role in Waymo’s history, and we are excited to bring our latest and greatest Waymo Driver to these communities.