Waymo’s Chinese-made robotaxis face new headwinds thanks to Biden’s tariffs

Waymo’s plans to expand its robotaxi fleet are facing new roadblocks thanks to the Biden administration’s trade policies.

The Alphabet-owned company had planned to introduce a new robotaxi manufactured by Zeekr, a subsidiary of China’s Geely. The cars are being designed in Sweden (where Geely owns Swedish carmaker Volvo), adapted from Geely’s all-electric five-door Zeekr. Waymo is then outfitting the cars with the hardware and software necessary for autonomous driving. The first new vehicles began arriving in the US earlier this year.

But the vehicles could be subject to newly restrictive tariffs from the Biden administration, which aims to stymie Chinese EV imports into the US. The administration said it would roughly quadruple tariffs, to 100 percent from the current 25 percent, on all electric vehicles manufactured in China. The tariffs are expected to go into effect later this year.

In addition, the US Commerce Department is planning to announce new rules that would bar any software that originates in China from autonomous and connected vehicles that operate in the US.

Many products have the potential to be caught up in the new tariff sweep, but none more so than electric vehicles. With the EV share of total car sales in China expected to jump to almost 50 percent this year, up from just 6 percent in 2020, the country has quickly become a dominant player in the electrification of the global auto industry.

So far, the current tariffs have been effective at preventing most Chinese companies from importing their EVs to the US. But officials are reportedly nervous about the willingness of China’s government to subsidize the auto manufacturing sector. China is the number one exporter of cars globally, even though virtually none of them end up in the US.

Waymo is now getting caught up in the trade hostilities between the two countries. The company says it is closely monitoring the situation while insisting that none of the software that enables its vehicles to drive themselves originates from China.

The first Zeekr-made autonomous vehicles were first spotted in California earlier this year. Waymo declined to comment on how many have been imported so far and whether the tariffs will alter the number of vehicles the company plans to eventually deploy.

“We are monitoring the tariffs closely,” Waymo spokesperson Ethan Teicher said in an email. “We’ve begun manually-driven, public road testing of the 6th-generation Waymo Driver on the Zeekr vehicle platform and have no updates to provide on its public deployment.”

As for the Commerce Department rules prohibiting Chinese software in autonomous vehicles, Teicher said Waymo is taking a similar wait-and-see approach.

“Once the Commerce Department’s rules are finalized, we’ll be in a better position to consider commenting on them,” he said. “For now, it’s worth noting that our automated driving system, the Waymo Driver, is designed and assembled in America.”

Today, Waymo’s fleet is mostly comprised of Jaguar I-Pace electric crossover SUVs, which largely operate in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix — with Austin soon to follow. Waymo has approximately 670 driverless vehicles in its fleet, according to recent documents submitted as part of a software recall. (Waymo retired its Chrysler Pacifica minivans in 2023.)

The Zeekr-made vehicle was supposed to be a lower-cost option for the company, which has racked up billions of dollars in expenses over the years. Waymo also introduced the possibility of the robotaxi arriving without traditional controls, like a steering wheel and pedals, to further drive down costs. (The company would need to obtain regulatory approval before deploying fully driverless vehicles on public roads.)

With room for five passengers, the Zeekr vehicles also promised to be more useful for larger groups than Waymo’s current fleet. That could be useful in helping Waymo compete with other human-powered ridehail services, like Uber and Lyft.

But if those vehicles are subject to the Biden administration’s tariffs, Waymo’s plans to expand into new cities with a brand-new vehicle might need to be rethought.