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Alphabet’s Waymo Published The company on Monday unveiled its sixth-generation driverless system with a more efficient sensor configuration. Despite having fewer cameras and LiDAR sensors than the current platform, the new configuration for the autonomous vehicles is said to maintain safety levels. It will coexist with the current-generation lineup when it’s ready for public release.
CNBC Reports The new system is being integrated into Geely Zeekr electric vehicles. Waymo first announced it would work with the Chinese EV manufacturer in the second half of 2021. The ride quality of the new platform is more boxy than the current-generation lineup, which is based on the Jaguar I-PACE SUV. The sixth-generation Zeekr-built vehicles are reported to offer improved accessibility, including a lower step, higher ceilings and more legroom, but the overall footprint is roughly the same as the Jaguar-based lineup.
The sixth-generation Waymo Driver reduces the number of cameras from 29 to 13 and LiDAR sensors from five to four. These work together with overlapping fields of view and safety-focused redundancy to perform better in a variety of weather conditions, according to Alphabet. The company says the new platform’s field of view has been expanded to up to 500 meters (1,640 feet), day or night, and can be used in a “range of” weather conditions.
Waymo says the new system is modular, so “different sensor components can be swapped out to adapt to the specific conditions of each operating environment,” such as more rigorous cleaning of vehicle sensors in colder cities. CNBC We made it clear that the cleaning system includes wipers that can remove most dirt and moisture.
The company says the sixth-generation driver will perform reliably in sweltering heat, fog, rain, and hail, thanks to “regular road trips to new cities,” which makes sense considering the cities it’s currently approved for all have relatively sunny, dry climates.CNBC The company reports testing in Detroit, Buffalo, and New York. Currently, Waymo only operates in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Austin. Since its launch in 2018, the company’s fleet of vehicles has provided roughly 50,000 paid self-driving trips each week.
Waymo says the new generation of vehicles already have thousands of miles of real-world experience (and “millions” of simulated miles), and the company expects they will be able to learn “shared knowledge” from previous-generation systems, allowing them to be ready for consumers in roughly half the time it took older models.
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