I'm guessing they want to start with premium feel to give people good first impressions. That's why their other car is $60k Pacifica minivan and not $25k Honda Civic.

I'm also guessing that they want an electric car. At the time they made a deal to purchase those cars (was quite a while ago) Jaguar i-Pace was one of few premium electric cars available (if you exclude Teslas, which obviously Waymo wouldn't want as it's a competitor).

At this stage cost is not a big problem.

- They likely were able to get a commercial volume purchase discount

- if that's the car their devs are testing on, it's going to be the fleet car, at least at first

- Alphabet has $135B cash on hand[0]

0: https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2021Q2_alphabet_earnings...

Electric and manufactured by the same company that does upfitting for Waymo vehicles (and also a Waymo investor) – Magna International.

Is Jaguar still a niche brand?

Most taxis in Denmark and Germany are Mercedes-Benz so it's not uncommon for the taxi industry to use luxury brands.

Niche in that they only sell a hundred thousand or so a year, yes. If Waymo are planning to seriously scale up they'll be using every Jaguar they're making!

Why would they need all Jaguars to scale up?

Why would you want to have a hodge-podge of random vehicle makes to service?