Amazon's Zoox is claiming a world's first by deploying a robotaxi on public roads while only carrying passengers.
The Zoox robotaxi is purpose-built with no steering wheel or pedals and can transport up to four passengers at up to 35mph. The maiden run on public roads was carried out on Feb. 11 and transported passengers (Zoox employees) along a one mile route at the company's headquarters in Foster City, California.
Zoox says this is "the first-time in history that an autonomous, purpose-built, FMVSS-compliant robotaxi is on public roads without a safety driver."
Although that may seem like a small achievement from the outside, getting to this point meant Zoox had to complete rigorous testing on private roads and gain approval from the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to operate on public roads. Currently, Zoox says it's "the only purpose-built robotaxi permitted on California public roads that is self-certified to the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS)."
For now, the service will remain exclusive (and free) to Zoox full-time employees, which allows the company to continue gathering data on how the vehicle performs autonomously over an extended period of time. Once "additional government clearances" have been secured, Zoox intends to roll out its service to the general public.
Zoox started life as a startup developing a robotaxi, but was acquired by Amazon back in 2020 to "help bring their vision of autonomous ride-hailing to reality." The purported $1.2 billion acquisition is clearly bearing fruit and Amazon must be considering using the autonomous vehicle for more than just passenger transport in the future as it gains more public road approvals.