I'm the Head of Design at Waymo.

I wish we could be together in person,

but I'm super excited to be here virtually

to share more on how we design our Waymo Driver.

So thank you so much for tuning in.

We have a lot of ground to cover today,

but first I'd like to take a few moments

to introduce you to Waymo, who we are,

what we are doing, and why we are doing it.

We are a self-driving technology company

with a mission to make it safe and easy

for people and things to get where they're going.

Fully self-driving vehicles hold the promise

to improve road safety and offer new mobility options

to millions of people.

Driving today is not exactly as safe as it could be,

which is why safety is at the core of Waymo's mission.

Globally there are close to 1.35 million deaths

every year due to vehicle crashes.

With more than half of those people being pedestrians,

motorcyclists, and cyclists.

And it goes beyond fatalities.

There are over 50 million injuries worldwide

caused by vehicle crashes every year.

There's a clear theme to the vast majority

of these incidents: human error and inattention.

In fact, 94% of crashes in the U.S.

involve human choice or error, whether it's speeding,

distraction from our phones, lack of sleep,

or drunk driving, there are a lot of factors

that lead to these statistics.

Over the last 10 years, we've put our technology

through the world's longest

and toughest ongoing driving test

to help address these grim statistics

we've self-driven more than 20 million miles

on public roads,

over 10 billion miles in simulation,

and across over 25 cities in the U.S.

That's hundreds of years of human driving experience

that benefits every vehicle in our fleet.

Let's take a deeper look at our history.

We started back in 2009

as the Google self-driving car project.

In the early days, we were focused on developing

the core capabilities of self-driving

and understanding the challenges.

In 2011, we started developing all of our own hardware

in-house, alongside our software, after realizing

nothing off the shelf was as advanced as we needed.

In 2013, we made a key decision to pivot

from developing a driver-assistant system

to exclusively pursuing fully self-driving technology.

So we took a clean sheet approach and developed Firefly,

a vehicle that could move people around cities

with no human driver.

Two years later in 2015, we completed the world's first

fully autonomous ride on public roads

with Firefly in Austin, Texas.

In 2016, with that landmark ride under our belts,

we transitioned from being part of Google,

and became Waymo, an independent company within Alphabet.

Since then, we've forged key partnerships with OEMs

like Fiat Chrysler and Jaguar Land Rover,

welcomed the members of the public

into our fully self-driving cars,

launched our self-driving trucking program,

and most recently, we begun offering

fully driverless rides to our riders.

Throughout this experience, we've been focused on building

the Waymo Driver, which is how we refer

to our self-driving technology.

There are two pieces to the Waymo Driver:

hardware and software.

On the hardware side we have a sensor suite

that includes lidar, cameras, radar,

and a powerful AI compute platform.

Combined, these sensors give our vehicles

a 360 degree view of the world, over 300 meters away.

On the software side, the brain of our self-driving

vehicles, we take all of the information

our sensors collect to answer four key questions:

Where am I?

What's around me?

What will happen next?

and what should I do?

Together, our hardware and software work in concert

to paint the complete picture of the world around the car

and enable us to navigate roads safely.

Our Waymo Driver can be deployed across a number

of different business applications globally,

serving many different industries.

Ride hailing is an important application of our Driver,

and our main focus.

Our technology can also make trucking safer

and more efficient, and fill a pressing need

for more drivers in many parts of the world.

Delivery is another important opportunity,

something we are testing now with partners,

like AutoNation, to deliver car parts

rapidly to their dealerships.

Our OEM partners are also interested in sharing

the Waymo Driver with their customers

through personally owned cars, and we will work with them

to bring that application to life.

These applications fall into two categories:

moving people, which we will do through Waymo One,

and moving things, which we will do through Waymo Via,

our new sub-brand focused on commercial goods delivery.

Now that you have a sense of Waymo

and the Driver we're building, I'd like to dive into

what we are here to talk about: design,

and how we think about it at Waymo.

Our process is guided by our design principles and language.

Developing design that is consistent, yet flexible,

is important for the tech industry,

because things change so fast,

from the technology, to the products.

At Waymo we follow four core design principles

for all of our products and have a design language

which evolves over time based on our strategy.

Our design principles are simple, honest,

approachable, and delightful.

Simplicity is embedded into our core at Waymo.

We make it simple and easy for anyone to get

from A to B, so our design should be easy to understand

and free of unnecessary elements.

Next is honest.

We put the utmost consideration and thought

into every part of our technology and service.

And all of our designs should be honest and thoughtful.

Then approachable. It's important that all of our designs

be easily accessible, sincere and friendly

to attract curious new customers

and create a sense of community.

And finally, delightful.

Our design should reflect our optimistic goals

and ambitions for the future

by inspiring wonder, delight, and intrigue.

Design language goes hand in hand with brand identity

and defines characteristics, colors,

and material applications of Waymo's products.

Whether they be a physical product like a vehicle,

or digital products,

such as, the passenger screens in our vehicles.

Design language really comes down to guiding

how the product looks and how it makes people feel.

Good design language requires strategic embodiment

of brand values and design principles,

and can't be established in a day.

Our current design language

is made up of four different pillars:

Pure, Flow, Balance, and Contrast.

Keeping the design pure and simple is important

for the Waymo Driver, especially since we have several

different vehicle platforms from different OEMs.

Because each of these OEMs has its own design language

which is beyond our control,

we have to keep our design as pure as possible

to be harmonious without aesthetic conflict.

Flow design has both functional and visual benefits

for the Waymo Driver.

It allows us to improve aerodynamics,

and reduce the visual mass.

Balance is important for the Waymo Driver's field of view

and mass distribution, but also is directly related

to how users perceive the safety and comfort

of our vehicle.

Since stable and balanced design gives people

a sense of safety.

Lastly, contrast helps to simplify

various different elements of the Waymo Driver

and has great functional benefits.

For example, we use both white and black coloring

across our sensor suite,

and both have different functional advantages.

To blend Waymo's design language with all other requirements

of the technology and platform, we constantly develop

concepts and verify on the vehicle.

While this is our current state,

our design language evolves over time...

...Which is exactly what I want to cover next.

Let's take a quick look at how our design has changed

over the last 10 years across three distinct phases,

five generations of the Waymo Driver,

and over 6 vehicle platforms.

(bright uplifting music)

Since our inception we've moved through

three main stages of design: Retrofitting,

building from the ground up, and applying our Driver

across multiple OEM platforms.

When we first started in 2009, design was very limited.

Our exterior sensors were mostly off the shelf

and exposed on the car.

The only design items were interior displays and controls.

This was more of a prototype stage

where we were solely focused

on achieving basic functionality.

Following our retrofit stage, we then designed our own

self-driving car from scratch, Firefly.

Building a self-driving car from the ground up

was a huge learning for us from both a technical

and customer standpoint.

After this valuable experience,

we realized that in order to scale our fleet faster,

we should focus on the technology and building our driver

instead of building a car.

To do that, we partnered with OEM companies,

like Fiat Chrysler and Jaguar,

to provide us with custom vehicles

that have enabled us to launch our ride hailing service

and commercial goods delivery.

This has been a huge design challenge,

since we've had to ensure Waymo's design and branding

is represented across the multiple different OEM platforms,

so that users can easily identify the Waymo Driver.

Also, how we approach design is fundamentally different.

Whereas OEMs are selling a car, we are selling a service.

Now, what I'm most excited for today!

Let's take a closer look

at our fifth-generation Waymo Driver

and its design details.

With this latest generation, we were motivated

to celebrate the Waymo Driver as a unique design element

separate from the vehicle platform,

which maintains its own design identity.

Here's what that looks like on our new vehicle platform,

The Jaguar I-PACE.

(upbeat electronic music)

Compared to previous generations,

our sensors and compute are even more powerful than before.

Every part is designed for scale, and it comes with

a distinctive Waymo look.

What are we are building is not a concept car,

we are designing our Driver for the real world,

to be used by our thousands of Waymo One riders

as well our B2B partners.

Here you can see the breakdown of our custom-built hardware

that makes up the fifth- generation Waymo Driver.

Lidar, cameras, and radar, as well as compute.

Each of them is more powerful than the previous generation

and equipped with enhanced capabilities.

First, let's look at our new family of lidar,

which has an even higher resolution

across a wider range.

As one of the Waymo Driver's most powerful sensors,

our lidar paints a picture

of its surroundings in great detail.

It sees the world in 3D and can see in the dark of night

without any illumination.

Our 360 Lidar, which is located in our dome,

can see up to 300 meters away,

and provides a bird's eye view of the cars,