Amazon’s Zoox opens robotaxi production site in East Bay

By Ed Ludlow, Bloomberg

Amazon.com Inc.’s Zoox autonomous driving unit opened a robotaxi production facility in California in the latest move by a deep-pocketed tech company to expand the nascent industry.

The site in the San Francisco Bay area city of Hayward will be able to churn out 10,000 purpose-built robotaxis a year once it reaches full scale, Zoox said in a statement on Wednesday. The company expects the plant will create hundreds of jobs in the region as it grows.

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“The reality is we are just ready,” Zoox Chief Executive Officer Aicha Evans said in an interview on Bloomberg Tech on Wednesday. The strategy is to start “putting the capacity in place and then turning it on little by little as we go city by city” with commercial launches, she said.

Zoox is one of several companies vying to secure a foothold in the market for autonomous ridehailing. Competitors include Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo unit and Tesla Inc., which plans to begin offering rides in Austin with no driver behind the wheel as early as Sunday.

The Amazon-owned company’s purpose-built robotaxi is akin to a shuttle and has no steering wheel or pedals, with four inward-facing seats. Zoox would need an exemption from US auto safety rules that require vehicles to have driver controls, though the Trump administration has said it’s working on changes to provide those approvals faster.

Zoox is “very grateful” to the administration’s work in preparing the US for robotaxis and talks with regulatory bodies are “going well”, Evans said.

Zoox is testing or operating robotaxis on a limited basis in San Fransisco and Las Vegas, where it plans to launch its service. Waymo, which uses vehicles made by other automakers that it rigs with self-driving software and sensors, is seen as the market leader and charges fares for rides in multiple US markets.

To start, Zoox has a dozen of its robotaxis driving on the Las Vegas Strip, Evans said. The commercial service will launch later in the year and pricing will be competitive with traditional ride-hailing services.

(Updates with Bloomberg Television interview starting in the third paragraph.)

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