Waymo Hits 250,000 Paid Trips Weekly, Plans New Autonomous Vehicle Plant in Phoenix Metro Area

Waymo is planning to expand its operations in a big way, ushering in the continued push for autonomous driving, particularly ride hailing, according to the company’s latest blog post containing a few important pieces of news.

First, the Alphabet company announced that Waymo One — its ride-hailing app — was now responsible for instigating 250,000 trips weekly, spanning cities including Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco. Beyond that, the company suggested, Waymo One is set to expand its operational boundaries by beginning service in Atlanta, Miami, and Washington, D.C., at some point in 2026.

Second, Waymo unveiled its plan to construct a brand-new 239,000-square-foot autonomous vehicle factory in the Phoenix Metro area — Mesa, more particularly — in partnership with Magna. There, thousands of the company’s Jaguar I-PACEs equipped with proprietary autonomous driving technology will be produced on an annual basis. Those vehicles are both designed and assembled stateside, as the company was keen to point out, perhaps as a result of the ongoing tariff tensions affecting the automotive sector and the U.S. economy more broadly.

“The new Waymo and Magna manufacturing facility in Mesa is the latest example of Arizona being the new home for technology to innovate and grow,” said Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs, per the press release.

“I’m proud to see autonomous vehicles on our streets every day, helping get people where they need to be safely. The new manufacturing facility will enhance this presence, and the local jobs it’s creating will help Arizona’s tech economy continue to rise on the world stage,” Hobbs added.

“The Waymo Driver integration plant in Mesa is the epicenter of our future growth plans,” said Ryan McNamara, VP of operations.

“With our partners at Magna, we’ve opened a manufacturing site that enables the cost efficiency, flexibility, and capacity to scale our fleet to new heights,” McNamara concluded.

Waymo To Introduce Automated Assembly Line, Building Zeekr RTs Including Latest Driver Tech

Attributing a significant degree of technological and scaling progress to the new facility, the autonomous vehicle company suggested that its sixth-generation Waymo Driver tech could be rolled out on new builds originating from the Mesa plant — and that said plant would introduce a fully automated assembly line capable of substantially ramping up overall production numbers.

According to the press release, that plant could end up producing “tens of thousands of fully autonomous Waymo vehicles per year.”

As The Verge detailed, Waymo’s latest Driver technology is set to include incorporation into the Zeekr RT model, with Zeekr itself being a subsidiary of Chinese automaker Geely. Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 is also slated to join the fleet’s lineup after being fitted with the latest Driver technology.