For those not in/near the automotive industry, this is very interesting for several reasons:
1) With this move, Alphabet is basically saying they a) don't want to continue funding the autonomous moonshot on their own, and b) want some partners to come on board for various reasons
2) $2.25B is a big round, and speaks to the level of confidence in Waymo as well as the massive cost to get to market
3) Magna is effectively an outsourced automotive production company. You can give them a vehicle design spec and they will spin up a production line to make it for you. This points to the possibility of Waymo stepping outside the "buy from an OEM and retrofit" plan, or of outsourcing the retrofit entirely to Magna for scale at some point
4) AutoNation is also an interesting investor here given that they are effectively an OEM-agnostic dealership network and they have a pretty strong fleet sales arm. This is another indicator that Waymo might be looking to sidestep the traditional OEM channels entirely.
1) With this move, Alphabet is basically saying they a) don't want to continue funding the autonomous moonshot on their own, and b) want some partners to come on board for various reasons
2) $2.25B is a big round, and speaks to the level of confidence in Waymo as well as the massive cost to get to market
3) Magna is effectively an outsourced automotive production company. You can give them a vehicle design spec and they will spin up a production line to make it for you. This points to the possibility of Waymo stepping outside the "buy from an OEM and retrofit" plan, or of outsourcing the retrofit entirely to Magna for scale at some point
4) AutoNation is also an interesting investor here given that they are effectively an OEM-agnostic dealership network and they have a pretty strong fleet sales arm. This is another indicator that Waymo might be looking to sidestep the traditional OEM channels entirely.