Waymo has acquired a 5,500-acre proving ground in Wittman, Arizona — a property previously used by Apple for its now-defunct autonomous vehicle project — for $220 million, according to property records filed with Maricopa County and confirmed by the company to TechCrunch.
The sale, recorded June 5, transfers the massive closed-course facility from Route 14 Investment Partners LLC, a Delaware shell company associated with Apple, to the Alphabet-owned autonomous driving company. The Phoenix Business Journal first spotted the filing.
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A facility built for autonomous vehicle testing at scale
The Arizona site dwarfs Waymo’s other closed-course facilities. It includes a 115-acre city course designed to simulate urban driving environments, a 35-acre vehicle dynamics area, a four-mile oval track, and a freeway course purpose-built for autonomous vehicle testing. A Waymo spokesperson told TechCrunch the facility will be used to simulate driving scenarios in a controlled environment to continuously test and improve the performance of its self-driving system. Specifically, the company plans to use it for rider-only testing, motion control testing, operational training workflows, and future testing expansion.
Waymo still operates the Castle Proving Ground in California and the Transportation Research Center in Ohio, but both are significantly smaller than the Arizona site.
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Apple’s Project Titan comes full circle
Apple originally purchased the property in 2021 for $125 million after renting access to it for years. Prior to Apple’s involvement, the facility was used by Fiat Chrysler to test vehicles and components in hot weather, featuring different road surfaces and a high-speed oval track. Apple used the site to test prototype vehicles as the company cycled through various iterations of its self-driving car effort, known internally as Project Titan. That project was shuttered in early 2024 after Apple had spent billions of dollars on development.
Waymo’s expanding fleet and footprint
The acquisition comes as Waymo accelerates its commercial robotaxi operations. The company’s fleet now stands at close to 4,000 vehicles, and it recently began offering the first rides in its new van manufactured by Zeekr. Waymo has said it aims to produce tens of thousands of robotaxis per year, including the Zeekr van and the Hyundai Ioniq 5. The Zeekr vehicles are sent to Waymo’s Arizona factory, where they are outfitted with the company’s self-driving system.
Waymo began testing autonomous vehicle technology in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler in 2017, and the area became its first commercial robotaxi market. The company has since expanded to more than 10 U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Austin, and Atlanta. The new proving ground, located near other test facilities in the same Arizona corridor, gives Waymo a dedicated, large-scale closed course to validate its systems as it scales toward broader deployment.
