Waymo lands first Chinese EV in the US to beat Tesla Cybercab to the punch with Nvidia Thor-powered Zeekr RT

Waymo will score both the first mass-produced autonomous passenger vehicle and what might be the first electric vehicle from a Chinese company to officially make it to the US in numbers.

This became clear from Zeekr's CES 2025 expo announcements, where it revealed that the first robotic minivan built for autonomy from the ground up is based on its Mix passenger vehicle that has been on sale since October. It comes with 76 kWh battery and fast 13-minute charging, as well as numerous flexible seating and cargo configurations.

The Mix-based Zeekr RT (for Robotic Taxi) will also beat the Tesla Robovan that Elon Musk teased during the Cybercab unveiling event to the punch, joining the Waymo fleet of autonomous vehicles for testing en masse later this year. Tesla's Robovan, on the other hand, doesn't even have a release date, while the Cybercab only has a tentative one for 2026, so the Zeekr RT could be the only viable alternative in the US until then.

Zeekr is trying to make Waymo's approval process for putting the RT on public roads as smooth as possible by equipping it with redundant steering, braking, and power supply, as well as failsafe operation algorithms in the US. This is in stark contrast with the Cybercab that Tesla is now trying to get approved without a steering wheel, pedals, or charging port.

The Zeekr robotaxi display at the Petersen Automotive Museum, however, says that it plans to remove the steering wheel and pedals from Waymo's RT robovan when federal regulations allow it "in the future."

Besides being the first robotaxi in mass production, the RT will also be powered by the first custom vehicle autonomy kit that Zeekr based on the new Nvidia Thor self-driving chip architecture. Nvidia says that the Thor Blackwell processor is capable of 1,000 TFLOPS of AI computing power, which can be flexibly distributed between self-driving and in-car infotainment duties according to the manufacturer's needs.

The Zeekr RT robovan is based on the $39,000 Zeekr Mix passenger minivan that it also brought to the ongoing CES 2025 expo in Las Vegas for all visitors to see and test.

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