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Why does Waymo use a niche British luxury car for their platform? Must be very expensive and what are the benefits?
by chrisseaton 5y ago
Why does Waymo use a niche British luxury car for their platform? Must be very expensive and what are the benefits?
- judge2020 5y ago- They likely were able to get a commercial volume purchase discount - if that's the car their devs are testing on, it's going to be the fleet car, at least at first - Alphabet has $135B cash on hand[0] 0: https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2021Q2_alphabet_earnings_release.pdf#page=4 https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2021Q2_alphabet_earnings...
- kjksf 5y agoI'm guessing they want to start with premium feel to give people good first impressions. That's why their other car is $60k Pacifica minivan and not $25k Honda Civic. I'm also guessing that they want an electric car. At the time they made a deal to purchase those cars (was quite a while ago) Jaguar i-Pace was one of few premium electric cars available (if you exclude Teslas, which obviously Waymo wouldn't want as it's a competitor). At this stage cost is not a big problem.
- ra7 5y agoElectric and manufactured by the same company that does upfitting for Waymo vehicles (and also a Waymo investor) – Magna International.
- keewee7 5y agoIs Jaguar still a niche brand? Most taxis in Denmark and Germany are Mercedes-Benz so it's not uncommon for the taxi industry to use luxury brands.
- chrisseaton 5y agoNiche in that they only sell a hundred thousand or so a year, yes. If Waymo are planning to seriously scale up they'll be using every Jaguar they're making!
- yupper32 5y agoWhy would they need all Jaguars to scale up?
- chrisseaton 5y agoWhy would you want to have a hodge-podge of random vehicle makes to service?