Waymo has been playing Coy for years to tell exactly how many Jaguar I-Pace EVs are in the autonomous fleet, a figure covering vehicles used for testing and commercial robotic operations. On Monday, the alphabet company finally provided a peek into the business side of the fleet.

Waymo said on Monday it has more than 1,500 commercial robots as part of the larger announcement. And research is being conducted through Magna to build more than 2,000 automatic i-pace vehicles at a new Arizona plant.

Waymo has worked with Magna for many years, at a closed facility in Detroit. The new 239,000-square-foot facility located in the suburbs of Mesa in Phoenix is ​​strategically located in one of Waymo’s Robotaxi markets, close to other service areas in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin.

A Waymo spokesman told TechCrunch that the company looked at other locations, but eventually it chose MESA because it was close to other markets and due to the consistent weather it made it ideal for the verification process needed before the public could use the robot.

Waymo said in a blog post that the factory received final delivery from Jaguar earlier this year. From here, contract builders Magna and Waymo took over the integration of the autonomous driving system into the vehicle. Waymo highlights a new process aimed at speeding up production to public use, noting that AVS can expel itself from the facility and use it directly.

"In fact, these vehicles can take over their first public passengers less than 30 minutes after leaving the factory," Waymo said in its blog post. The company said vehicles intended for use in other cities could deploy them to public services within hours of shipping to local warehouses.

The MESA factory is designed to handle other vehicle platforms, especially integrating the sixth generation of Waymo’s autonomous driving system into the Zeekr RT later this year.

The company said that over time, the plant will introduce automated assembly lines and other efficiencies, which the company noted will be able to build tens of thousands of fully autonomous Waymo vehicles each year when operating at full capacity.