Waymo Orders 5,100 Chinese-Built Robotaxis as Capitol Hill Raises Security Alarms

Waymo has ordered thousands of Chinese-built electric vehicles to rapidly expand its US robotaxi fleet, the New York Post reported on October 19, 2026. The Alphabet-owned company’s powder-blue “Ojai” vans — now operating in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix, and aimed for Denver, Las Vegas, and San Diego this fall — are a rebranded version of a vehicle made by Zeekr, a unit of China’s Geely Holding Group.

Waymo is on pace to import about 5,100 Ojai vehicles by the end of this year — more than doubling its current fleet, which consists mostly of Jaguar I-Pace SUVs built in Austria and outfitted with Waymo’s self-driving technology at an Arizona plant, according to tracking data from research firm MoffettNathanson.

The gambit is drawing heat in Washington. The Commerce Department has banned the import or sale of any “connected vehicles” or self-driving software made in China or Russia starting with model year 2027, and legislation to formalize a ban is under consideration in both chambers of Congress. Waymo says it complies with federal rules by sourcing only the physical vehicles from Zeekr and adding its own sensors and self-driving software in Arizona — but critics call the tie-up a glaring economic and national-security risk.

The tension is real: Waymo needs cheap, purpose-built vehicles to win the robotaxi race against Tesla’s Cybercab, but the cheapest available option runs straight into bipartisan Washington opposition. Whether Waymo can scale on Zeekr hardware past 2027 without a domestic alternative will shape the economics of the whole robotaxi business.