Toaster-Shaped Robotaxis From Amazon Hit the Road

“Toaster-shaped taxis that don't have a driver or a steering wheel have started rolling across San Francisco and charging for rides in Las Vegas.

 

The all-electric cars are the first robotaxis offering rides on the roads without standard driver features like a dashboard and pedals. They can hold up to four passengers who sit facing each other. The vehicles are called Zoox and they come from a new entrant in robotaxis: Amazon.com.

 

Amazon is betting it can become a player in the robotaxi market, which Goldman Sachs expects to grow to nearly $19 billion in sales by 2030, from $376 million last year.

 

Alphabet's Waymo, the early leader with roughly 4,000 vehicles operating in various cities, and Tesla provide stiff competition. Tesla has started volume production of the Cybercab, which lacks a steering wheel and pedals, but hasn't gotten the same regulatory approval as Zoox to begin offering rides to the public.

 

Chief Executive Aicha Evans says making its own vehicles allowed Zoox to more quickly fine-tune the design in response to rider feedback. "It takes a lot of imagination, belief, resilience and tenacity to do this when you're going against conventional wisdom," Evans said.

 

Regulators are approaching these new rides cautiously. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration last month allowed Zoox to charge for rides in up to 5,000 vehicles within the next two years. Yet it barred Zoox taxis on roads with heavy rain, snow, large quantities of leaves or a speed limit of more than 45 miles an hour.

 

The company's fleet counts about 100 vehicles. Zoox assembles them at a plant in Hayward, Calif., that has the capacity to produce as many as 10,000 robotaxis a year.

 

Amazon bought Zoox in 2020 for $1.2 billion. In 2022, Zoox self-certified its cars as compliant with NHTSA's Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. The step would have eliminated barriers to Zoox's deployment, but the agency objected. In addition to not having manual controls such as brake pedals that are involved in safety tests, the cars didn't use the right type of glass or side reflectors, NHTSA said.

 

Last year, NHTSA granted Zoox an exemption from the safety standards and allowed the company to offer free demonstration rides. Zoox taxis have logged more than three million driverless miles on public roads and carried nearly one million riders.

 

A NHTSA spokeswoman said the agency is modernizing standards "to remove mandates that assume the presence of human drivers, such as manual brake pedals, transmission shifters, and windshield wipers and defrosters, while maintaining all relevant safety performance requirements." NHTSA is also developing performance standards for autonomous vehicles, she said.

 

Alex Roy, an autonomous-vehicle expert and partner at New Industry Venture Capital, sees building a custom vehicle as the most difficult path to robotaxi deployment because of the time and money required for software development, manufacturing and safety testing. "This vehicle decision is the ultimate risk factor," he said. "The stars have to align in every dimension of the business for that to become viable."

 

Zoox is planning to expand. It is testing its robotaxi in Austin, Texas, and Miami, where it plans to start service soon.” [1]

 

1. Toaster-Shaped Robotaxis From Amazon Hit the Road. Davis, Ellie.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 24 Aug 2026: B3.