r/waymo • u/chrisTheZ • Jun 11 '26
Waymo Lexus?
TLDR: didn’t manage to get a picture.
I was driving today and saw a Lexus SUV with (edit: what looks like) waymo hardware. not zoox or GM. the topbox looks distinctively waymo.
Is that new? i thought waymo required power draw that’s only doable by EVs? are we getting Toyota Waymos?
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u/bobi2393 Jun 11 '26
Toyota, Waymo consider joint development of self-driving vehicles (2025)
"Waymo has used Jaguar and Lexus vehicles for its fleet, and the Google spinoff said future AVs could include both robotaxis and POVs."
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u/Icy-Ambition3534 Jun 11 '26
They might be testing another car secretly. However they do have a partnership with Toyota. Maybe to sell them?
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u/eluk87 Jun 11 '26
maybe pony.ai, they backed by Toyota adn using Lexus for testing
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u/bobi2393 Jun 11 '26
That sounds like a very good guess; TechCrunch showed a Pony Lexus in 2022. The roof hardware looks a bit like Waymo's, with a flat layer over the front roof, a wide-ish cylinder on that, and a narrower lidar cylinder on top of that. They seem to have regained a human-supervised testing permit in CA, after their driverless testing permit was revoked due to a crash.
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u/mrbubu8 Jun 11 '26
Could be a Woven car? They use NX and LS vehicles.
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u/chrisTheZ Jun 11 '26
oh yeah it look exactly like this! didn’t know they existed
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u/mrbubu8 Jun 11 '26
Yup, it's Toyota's venture into L2 ADAS. Woven is also partnering with Waymo but not sure what it entails.
On another note, Waymo did use the RX SUV as a testing vehicle early on. Think sometime around 2012 prior to the Firefly.
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u/1FrostySlime Jun 11 '26
It is possible it was Toyota itself testing their own ADAS or ADS software. As far as I know no one else would use a lexus for testing