AIBRIEF
Even after the 127.5% tariff and Waymo's hardware fit out, each Chinese built Zeekr lands at roughly $111,000, less than half the cost of a retrofitted Jaguar I Pace.
Waymo has imported 3,200 Chinese-built Zeekr EVs through the Port of Los Angeles since 2024 and is paying the full 127.5% U.S. import tariff on every one. Even with that duty plus the hardware and software fit-out, each unit still lands cheaper than retrofitting a Jaguar I-Pace.
Customs bills of lading surfaced by Forbes' Alan Ohnsman: 3,200 Zeekr units, 2,600 of them arriving in 2026 alone. The base customs value on each is roughly $38,000. Add the 127.5% tariff and the per-vehicle cost rises to about $86,500. Layer on roughly $25,000 of Waymo's own hardware and software fit-out and the number clears $111,000.
That is less than half the reported $200,000-plus it costs to retrofit a Jaguar I-Pace with the same driver stack. Waymo is absorbing a punishing tariff because the alternative, a retrofitted I-Pace, is more expensive than the duty itself.
The chassis, branded as the "Ojai," went into public service in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix in May with the sixth-generation Waymo Driver, per Waymo's launch post. The same software stack is named in NHTSA Recall 26E035, which covers driverless freeway-operation software across 3,871 fifth-gen Waymo Driver units, a broader fleet population, not the Zeekr hardware specifically.
What remains open is how long a fleet-only import lane stays open while consumer-facing dealers remain locked out by the same tariff.