Waymo Hyundai IONIQ 5

The Waymo Hyundai IONIQ 5 is the second vehicle to carry the 6th-generation Waymo Driver and the answer to an obvious weakness of the first one: the Waymo Ojai is built in China and imported under a 100% tariff. The IONIQ 5 is built at Hyundai's Metaplant near Savannah, Georgia, shipped nearly complete to a Magna-operated facility and fitted there with the same sensor and compute stack used on the Ojai. Unlike the purpose-built Ojai, this is a converted consumer crossover, so the autonomy hardware is added rather than designed in: a rooftop assembly carrying lidar, radar, cameras and microphones, plus sensors on the front and rear bumpers and the front fenders. It keeps its steering wheel and normal cabin, which makes it the more conventional of the two — and the easier one to build in volume. The programme comes from a multi-year agreement announced in October 2024; road testing on public roads, including San Francisco, has been running through 2025 and 2026, still with the vehicle in a test rather than revenue role. Hyundai is reported to be preparing an order of 50,000 units and to start shipping in the fourth quarter of 2026, which would make it the volume backbone of a fleet Waymo wants operating in around 20 US cities. Waymo has not published vehicle-level specifications for this variant — battery, range, seating changes or price — and the numbers that circulate are those of the standard IONIQ 5. This profile will be updated when the first cars enter revenue service.

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