Developed with Geely's Zeekr brand, Waymo's latest tease looks futuristic and comfortable.

It may lack a name, but it has a compelling design.

For a service still available in a choice few American cities, Waymo certainly has a healthy backlog of desirable machines just waiting to fill its ranks when the fleet deploys en masse. The latest comes courtesy of Zeekr, Geely's luxury EV brand, and takes the shape of a small, upright van with both sliding front and rear doors. The unnamed machine, referred to only as a "mobility vehicle" in the Zeekr release, is currently being designed and developed at the company's R&D facility in Gothenberg, surely taking advantage of some learnings from sibling companies Polestar and Volvo. They're all part of the big, happy Geely family. That the van lacks a steering wheel and pedals shows it's designed exclusively to be a fully autonomous machine, but equally striking is the lack of a B-pillar. There's no fixed divider between the front and rear doors, leaving a wide, clean opening to the vehicle. This, plus a flat floor make it ideal for ride-hailing duty. Meanwhile, comfortable seating for five points to a utopian future not only where our vehicles drive themselves but when we're comfortable getting in a car with strangers again.

Your guess is as good as ours about when we'll be able to cruise by the Golden Gate in an autonomous Zeekr shuttle.

If you're unfamiliar with Zeekr, don't feel bad. Geely's luxury EV brand was just introduced in April of 2021 and has only delivered a few-thousand cars in its home market of China. International expansion plans for the brand are set for 2023, but neither Geely nor Waymo are saying when the autonomous van you see here will be hitting roads. When it does, it'll sit next to into Waymo's other offerings currently in development, including the Chrysler Pacifica and Jaguar I-Pace . They all look substantially different, but the brain of them all will be the same: Waymo One. 

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