Waymo has announced they will deploy in Toronto. Having worked at Waymo, I am pleased to see it come to my hometown. There may be interesting implications of operation in Canada that might be different from the USA.

Waymo has already taken steps to deploy outside the USA, in Tokyo and London, and eventually Munich and Singapore, so Canada will not be the first such international move. It’s apropos, though, since Chris Urmson, who ran Waymo engineering from it’s first days until he left to form Aurora in 2016, is also a Canadian.

It’s also a more snowy city than most, though Denver is similar and Waymo has also tested in Detroit, Minneapolis, the Northeast and most snowy of all, Truckee CA. Robotaxi must not only handle snow, once people start to depend on them, they will not accept them declaring a “snow day” every time and forcing people back to Uber, particularly if they replace Uber. Today, in the pilot phase, Waymo often shuts down in extreme weather. In Toronto and Denver, a heavy snowstorm isn’t extreme weather, it’s “Tuesday.”

Also interesting will be if Waymo decides to base their Toronto service on the Ojai, their Chinese-made van robotaxi. The Ojai, based on the Geely Zeekr Max, is subject to 125% tariffs on import from China. It had been intended to be Waymo’s access to the great value proposition of Chinese EVs, but Presidents Biden and Trump blocked that. Waymo still pays that fat tax rather than waste their efforts on the Ojai, but in the USA they also plan to use Hyundai Ioniq 5 vehicles. Today, vehicle cost is not that important a factor in robotaxis, and it won’t be for a few years, but in the 2030s that will change. This is why Tesla has put effort into using a low-cost 2-seater as their vehicle, once they get it working.

Pictures in the Waymo press announcement show the discontinued i-Pace, not the Ojai or Ioniq. They state it will be the 6th generation Waymo, not the i-Pace, though they are mapping in Toronto now with the i-Pace. Waymo declined to comment on what vehicles will be used in Canada.

In Canada, the situation is different. Canada is allowing the import of 49,000 Chinese EVs per year, and that number is likely to increase. Waymo has a trick available that could let them get Ojai vans within that quota.

Waymo imports the vans (for under $40,000 before tariffs) and sends them to a U.S. factory run by Canadian automotive giant Magna, where they refit the vehicles with Waymo hardware and software. Waymo could re-export these vehicles to Canada. As long as they do this export of finished vehicles on March 1 and Sept 1 each year, they would be first in line for an allocation of the Chinese EV quota. They would get a refund of most of the 125% tariff they paid, and pay just 6% tariff entering Canada. This could also apply to other countries which allow Chinese EVs, like Germany, Japan and Singapore.

If Waymo tried to use up all the quota at once, there would be pushback, but an allocation of 5,000 or so would be fine. Other OEMs tend to import in a steady stream, but a fleet operator like Waymo could do them all at once. Waymo declined to answer questions about this plan.

Waymo could also work with Magna to refit the cars in one of their headquarters factories in Ontario. That would require a lot of extra work to duplicate the line, but then vehicles could be imported directly from China to Ontario. There’s a PR value to this--there is strong sentiment against US products in Canada due to the trade war instigated by President Trump, and the more Canadian content the better. But using Magna even in a U.S. factory may be enough.

The Canadian robotaxi scene will have a domestic player soon. Toronto based Waabi has a deal with Uber calls for 25,000 vehicles in the Uber fleet using Waabi’s self-driving software. That software is not yet ready to operate as a robotaxi, however. We might also see entry at some point by Chinese robotaxi companies like Pony or Baidu, who are already growing outside China. We may also see Zoox eventually grow outside the USA (Amazon has strong presence in Canada.) And we may see Tesla, once their robotaxi works. The U.S. made Cybercab would be subject to a 25% tariff under the trade war. Tesla brings vehicles from China into Canada, which now will also need to fit in the quota.

Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, is a Canadian citizen through his Canadian mother, and he attended university in Ontario using that passport. Normally that would be an asset, but Canadians have become much less fond of Musk and generally do not see him as Canadian. They might well even boycott his services to some extent--the province of Ontario cancelled a large Starlink contract allegedly because of Musk’s politics.