The Waymo Ojai Will Soon Offer Autonomous Rides Around the U.S. | Hacker News Reader

The Waymo Ojai Will Soon Offer Autonomous Rides Around the U.S.

caranddriver.com

44 pointsZigurd58 comments

Oh man I misunderstood that headline at first. I thought it was along the lines of "Waymo will start offering long-distance autonomous roadtrips across the US" but it's really "Waymo is still geoboxed in a handful of cities but is adding a second model of car to its fleet".

I've taken a handful of sightseeing roadtrips in the US where the pattern tends to be hike/sightsee during the day, then hop in the car in the evening and drive for a few hours to get close to tomorrow's destination. It'd be great to be able to do that, except outsource the driving (and skip the hotel) by sleeping through the drive. Similar to night train travel in Europe.

I've daydreamed the same thing.

I can picture my family of four getting on our PJs and hopping in a sleeper car on Friday night. We tell the car if we need to stop for a restroom, or anything else...

And we wake up on Saturday morning, up to eight hours away from home (were we allowed to go 90 mph? Or more?) And then we spend all day Saturday, all day Sunday, enjoying some town. Sunday night, we put on our PJs and hop in the sleeper car. We wake up Monday morning back at home, the kids go to school, and the adults go to work.

I could get to Duluth, Charleston WV, Sioux Falls, Toronto, Pittsburgh.

I also understood it the way that you did, and got excited. Womp womp. I'm optimistic that it will be reality in the not too distant future though.

Wen Waymo Campervans?!

Leaving aside the technical problems, there's just not a big market of people willing to pay couple hundred dollars a night to sleep in a car. Buses, planes, and trains work by spreading the fixed costs of the vehicle over all the riders. A car can't really compete with those ticket prices. Plus, there aren't many destination pairs with demand between them willing to pay high prices where competitive transit services don't already exist. LA/SF maybe, but we've already seen a number of luxury sleeper bus operators fail to materialize demand on that route. LA/Vegas formerly, but those days seem numbered with brightline.

If you can get the inside of a van to be basically small hotel room you are competing with the airline and hotel combined on price, so taking a way-motel (I demand royalties for that now Google) can work out much better. Plus a better experience than flying

Vehicle regs require passenger restraints for safety reasons. That's only analogous to a very specific kind of hotel room. The bus exemption kicks in for vehicles designed to carry more than 10 people.

Also, hotel rooms tend to offer privacy. If you do that in a vehicle people get motion sickness.

To be clear, I do think there's interesting stuff in this general area. I'm just not sure it's as a sleeper bus. The big OEMs have loads of interesting concept designs buried in their basements about similar vehicles that I wish could see the light of day.

Why wouldn't a few-occupancy sleeper bus work? I'd agree that this is a bit beyond "normal cars are autonomous". But I don't think the driving part will be particularly special to this application. It's just the form factor that changes.

Whether it will be possible to be cheap enough operationally is an interesting question though. The price of an (autonomous) taxi is (probably?) largely lower bounded by cost to build the system divided by the number of times it's used. And that means the denominator largely scales inversely with trip length. So it might still be too expensive to offer hotel-price level fares for night-long drives

Many people would be tempted to buy a vehicle where this is a possibility though so its not just the economics of waymo

Few hundred dollars? Waymo's are more expensive than taxis. Spending the night in a driving taxis will be over a thousand dollars easily.

I wonder what loophole Waymo used here:

Bonelli said that the Ojai is not affected by the U.S. government's regulations that aim to prevent Chinese cars from being sold to customers in the U.S.

Possibly the Ojai is not fully assembled (therefore, not a car), or Waymo does not count as a consumer.

Also, I hope they're more comfortable than the current Jaguars. I was stuck in traffic in the back of a Waymo for almost an hour and it wasn't great. If Waymo is expanding their range, longer rides might be more common.

BYD already assembles buses in SoCal, so I don't see why they couldn't just set up something like that.

Ah, but asking Gemini, I guess its different:

Waymo is partnering with Chinese automotive giant Geely's brand, Zeekr, to produce the new AV platform. To comply with U.S. regulations, the vehicles are imported without any built-in telematics or data-transmitting hardware/software that could pose a national security risk.

"Base Vehicles": The vehicles Waymo receives from Zeekr are essentially "gliders" or base platforms, stripped of any internal communication systems that would allow them to send data back to the manufacturer in China. U.S. Installation: All of Waymo's self-driving technology and connected components are installed after the vehicles arrive in the U.S. by authorized personnel. This means the entire "connected tech" system on board is American-owned and American-fitted, allowing Waymo to argue its vehicles fall outside the scope of U.S. Commerce Department restrictions on Chinese connected vehicles.

They still have to pay steep tariffs, but on less complete cheaper vehicles.

For the Ipace-based Waymos, Magna was assembling them. They already built the Ipace for Jaguar. IIRC there's a plant in Arizona where Magna does this. So it's plausible that they are assembling the Zeeker van there, too. For whatever value of "assembling" gets around the tariffs. That and a few dozen solid gold Pixel Folds should do the job.

The import restrictions (can't import) on Chinese connected vehicles. It isn't about tariffs, they just can't import them. However, since Waymo is adding custom electronics in the US (and the Chinese vehicle is shipped to them with none), this restriction doesn't apply.

This all comes from an article one year ago:

https://www.wired.com/story/waymo-finds-a-way-around-us-rest...

They still have to pay a 100% tariff on the vehicle they receive, but It is probably somewhere in the realm of just $10k-$20k since they are receiving fairly stripped down vehicles.

"Bonelli said that the Ojai is not affected by the U.S. government's regulations that aim to prevent Chinese cars from being sold to customers in the U.S."

How does this get around the regulations? That's a massive loophole that will absolutely get abused by both China and domestic companies. Trucking, delivery vehicles, etc. will all get slammed by this.

I'm not a fan of protectionist regulations like the ones keeping Chinese automobiles out of the US, but if you're going to have them, at least make them effective.

They aren't selling them to American customers. The same how you see Xiaomi cars being tested in the US despite the ban, Xiaomi just imports them directly and lets select journalists use them, but they aren't actually sold there.

Is Waymo not an American customer?

Waymo can probably import them themselves, they just can't act as a dealer for customers in the US.

Waymo can import the base vehicles but none of the connected tech that comes with normal cars in China. Instead, they are specifically adding their own connected tech (after the car is delivered to the USA), so the ban is irrelevant to them.

Based on the past year, does the current administration seem resistant to being bribed into adding loopholes or turning a blind eye?

Tariffs are an incredibly tricky system. Two things that look essentially identical can be treated very differently depending on exactly how they get classified in the schedule. Some shoe brands (e.g. Converse) will use fuzzy soles for their sneakers, because it causes them to be classified as slippers instead where the tariff rates are different. The technical words used also tend to drift quite far from their typical meanings. In post-NAFTA automotive, "domestic" included things from Canada and Mexico up until recent EOs re-redefined it again, as an example.

The difference here are going to come down to differences between an unfinished product partially assembled in China and a completed vehicle imported from there and get into very detailed minutae of their value to the production system and its intended usage.

Certification documents show a single rear-mounted electric motor producing 268 horsepower and hooked up to a 93-kWh battery.

Wow, that seems like a lot of horsepower.

Box on turbo

Horsepower is pretty cheap in an EV once you have a big battery.

The 2026 Nissan Leaf, an economy car and one of the cheapest new EVs in the US at $29k, has 214hp.

They were using Jaguar I-Pace for a good while, right? That was nearly 400 hp.

However, they accelerate rather slowly. Waymo isn't in any need to get you to your destination faster, nor get into additional collisions.

To me the torque is more important than the horsepower: one nice thing about Waymo is that they're quite good at gentle, constant acceleration up San Francisco's steep hills. Human Uber drivers have a 50/50 chance of making me carsick when they try this, out of some combination of inexperience and driving a car without enough low-end torque.

This is the thing people seem to sleep on when it comes to EVs - they simply drive better than other cars. More responsive, better pickup, smoother drivetrains, etc.

This is also a feature of hybrids people overlook. They might have tiny ICE engines, but the additional torque from the electric motor more than makes up for it

I mean, kind of. Series hybrids (where the drivetrain is all electric and fed by a generator) yes, but all the parallel hybrids I've driven are still pretty anemic because you have both a tiny ICE engine and a tiny electric motor. They also don't always engage simultaneously in a way that makes it feel like you're getting the torque on demand.

Ehhhh.... The most prevalent hybrid (at least in the US) is the Toyota Prius. At least until to latest models, they were very slow, with a 0-60 time of ~10 seconds.

Tesla Model 3 Standard is 280HP/210kW. And it's only really limited by the C of the battery pack. Under optimal conditions I've measured 310HP, according to the Canbus app.

EVs are incredibly powerful. Even the humble Nissan Leaf would blow the doors off an 00s performance car.

I have a Leaf. It makes me laugh when people with "muscle cars" try to race me. One time I humored one of them, and completely smoked them off the line. And my car was still in Eco mode.

We have a VW e-Up, with a very meagre 80hp electric motor - I can guarantee that off the lights that car is faster than pretty much any muscle or sports car, because it just instantly accelerates from standstil. I used to own an AMG few years ago, and to match what the e-Up can do I'd have to put it into Sports+ mode then enable launch control, then sit there with revs at 4000rpm just waiting for the light to change so the car would actually launch quickly. But off the standing start from idle? No chance.

The peak torque at 0rpm is a nice feature for city traffic low-key drag racing. I think if you really wanted to have a chance to troll an EV owner you'd have to incite them to race you on a highway with conditions that cause frequent speed changes in the 50-100mph range. But tbh even they you'd have a hard time. Maybe if you kept that up until they ran down the battery?

Never or arrested on a public road basically vs my daily driver is fun even when driving in the real world. It’s not loud is the last real complaint I see.

The new model Y AWD non-performance does 0-60 in 4.6 seconds! The performance version is ~3.3; Ioniq 5 AWD is 4.6 and the N is 2.9 (!!!). For comparison the latest Corvette does 0-60 in 2.9 and the Z06 in 2.6.

These cars are insanely, incredibly fast. My G70 (gasoline, ~370 HP) does the jaunt in 4.5. That used to be considered a fast car, now it's just average (though the warranty is almost over, and I'll be modifying it to ~450HP).

TBH, electric cars 100% broke auto enthusiast circles. When a highly modified, very fast car just gets stomped by an electric car hauling a family of 4 it smashed that world to pieces. Especially in the early days, when EV enthusiasts were mostly Tesla techbro fanboys - who didn't really mix well with the oil, grease, gasoline, and DIY culture that was there before.

Interesting times for sure.

I really want to see a hybrid miata.

the miata was a fun car but really lacked acceleration. A good new design would make it both fun to drive, and obscenely good at acceleration.

Very low range with the tiny size I would expect. Batteries will become more dense with time and we will get there.

>San Francisco and then expanding last year to Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta.

"The Waymo Ojai Will Soon Offer Autonomous Rides Around the Southern U.S. in areas where there is no snow."

https://waymo.com/blog/2025/10/creating-an-all-weather-drive...

They are testing in Detroit.

And NYC. Just saw one this morning

Glad to hear it and I wish them luck! I was just clearing up the current status of self-driving vehicles re: the headline. For now they do not work in areas where road surfaces and edges get covered by and location changed by snow. They do not work "Around the US".

That sounds reasonable enough. If we can do this in areas that are less likely to suffer inclement weather, does it not make sense to realize the benefit?

> A series of 13 cameras, six radar sensors, and four lidar sensors dot the Ojai's exterior, and are fitted with onboard heaters to reduce ice buildup and small wipers and fluid to clear away dirt. These features will be critical as Waymo expands beyond warm-weather cities and into gnarlier climates in the northeast United States.

The whole point of this article is that the new vehicle is better suited to more climates.

All the cities above already have service, the expansion in the title refers to the new markets that should (hopefully) be unlocked with this new vehicle.

That's just because they wanted to eliminate variables. But they are adding snowy/icy places now.

And given how hard it is for humans to drive safely in the snow/ice, I wouldn't be surprised if they outperform humans in the snow just like they do in their current markets. Especially given that their radar sensors can "see" better in the snow than a human.

I've followed the research a little bit. The general sense I get is that, specifically vehicle control at the edge of traction, software in the lab has far outperformed normal humans for over a decade. The problem is that delivering the "boring" point A to B reliably in all conditions is still unsolved. Relative safety is also a moving target because all the advances in the first bucket are directly applicable to human-driven cars as driver aids.

Yeah, my non-autonomous Toyota can already see the lane lines better than me in the rain. However, that's not too beneficial when no other driver can see the lanes and everyone is just driving to not crash into each other.

It gets real hard when the entire road surface is covered with snow for weeks at a time (like after small 1" snowfalls that might not get cleared immediately like a heavy snow would). Or when snow buildup on the road edges change road edge location and cars parked on the side project well into the "nominal" GPS derived lanes. Lanes which human drivers won't be using. They'll be using emergent lanes defined by flocking behavior. I haven't seen any evidence that autonomous vehicles can detect or navigate such emergent, non-marked except by tracks and human gut feeling lanes.

Being "better" than human in these situations will cause crashes. The real goal is to drive like a human.

Small thing, but the article should have added how to pronounce Ojai. It sounds like “oh-hi”

They need to have a service that allows for pets. It is the only reason I still use Ubers!

All my support for carpools and shuttles in the US. We need this more especially in SF

https://www.sfmta.com/muni-transit

Is Waymo L5?

Waymo, being an Alphabet subsidiary, must be funneling rider data to the Google Ads business.

Does anybody know the general shape of it?

Protobufs probably

Most certainly protobufs, you literally can't build an RPC service that speaks a different protocol inside Google :)

I guess they are but that data must be a drop in the bucket compared to phone tracking.

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