Waymo, the self-driving car company run by Google's parent Alphabet, is adding a new vehicle to its fleet in the form of the sleek, all-electric Jaguar I-Pace.In fact, it's adding 20,000 of the Jaguar creations to its self-driving fleet over the next few years.
This week, we saw one of these specially outfitted Jaguars parked inside the Shoreline Amphitheatre concert venue during the Google IO 2018 conference.The $69,500 / 63,495 luxury car wasn't running, or even opening its doors to passengers for a peek inside as it was cordoned off beyond nylon barriers, but despite this, the compact SUV left a striking impression.The Jaguar I-Pace is rigged for self-driving, decked out in the Waymo sensors, cameras and lidar it'll need to scan the world around it to detect objects in the road and read street signs.Yet it maintains a distinct sense of style; you almost don't even notice the giant black orb on its roof or white boxes protruding from its sides.It's a car you'd like to take for a test drive regardless if it was a self-driving vehicle or not, that's for sure.As with Waymo's Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans, one of which was also on display at IO, the I-Pace will use machine learning to navigate tricking driving conditions, such as driving in the snow.To date, Waymo has driven 6 million miles on public roads in addition to hundreds of millions of virtual miles, experience and technology that the company says help to make its vehicles the most reliable self-driving cars on the road.Waymo has the ambitious plan of setting the Jaguar I-Pace free to pick up passengers in Phoenix, Arizona as part of self-driving transportation service this year.