June 26, 2026 - Waymo's Zeekr Ojai Meets Connected Car Rule

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for June 26, 2026, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry. 

China's Geely Group owns three different automotive brands that have vehicles in the U.S. market and are potentially threatened by the U.S. Commerce Department's Connected Car Rule. Starting in 2027, the rule prohibits the import or sale of vehicles that use vehicle-connectivity or driver-assist hardware or software sourced from China or Russia. Volvo recently received a waiver allowing it to continue selling vehicles here. Following yesterday's announcement from Polestar that it was withdrawing from the U.S. market as of 2027 due to the Connected Car Rule, I inquired about Zeekr, another Geely brand. 

Zeekr is not selling vehicles in the U.S., but it is supplying a small electric van now called the Ojai to Waymo for use as a robotaxi. The Waymo Ojai has been undergoing testing across numerous U.S. cities for nearly two years and is now carrying passengers in San Francisco. Since the Ojai is produced in China, I reached out to Waymo to determine if the vehicle is impacted by the Connected Car Rule. 

According to a Waymo spokesperson, there is no impact on Waymo's ability to deploy the Zeekr vehicle. Zeekr ships the base vehicle from its factory in China with no connectivity hardware or sensors. Waymo has a carefully vetted group of suppliers that provide the connectivity, compute hardware, and the company's proprietary sensors that are designed in the U.S. and produced at plants that comply with the rules. Everything is installed in the base vehicle in a factory in Mesa, Arizona, operated by Waymo and Tier 1 supplier Magna International. Even with the tariffs that the U.S. applies to Chinese-built electric vehicles, the much lower cost of the base vehicle, as well as the cost reductions to the new sixth-generation Waymo Driver hardware, should make the Ojai less than half the cost of the Jaguar i-Pace vehicles currently used for most of the Waymo fleet. 

Waymo and Magna are preparing to scale production from the Arizona facility that will also upfit Hyundai Ioniq 5s starting later this year to provide tens of thousands of robotaxis annually. 

Thanks for listening,