Tag: Amazon

I’m standing outside a nondescript corporate office park in Las Vegas next to a box-shaped vehicle with no proper front or back. It’s got a set of sliding doors, no steering wheel, and touchpad controls. It’s bidirectional, meaning it can move in either direction without turning around. And to be completely frank, it looks more like an oversized toaster than an actual car.

This is the second-generation Zoox robotaxi, a purpose-built autonomous shuttle that has been testing in and around Las Vegas for the last year and a half. Zoox, a subsidiary of Amazon, has been working on it for over a decade, and during this year’s CES, it finally let a few journalists take a ride.

So far, the only robotaxis operating on public roads in the US are run by Alphabet’s Waymo. Others have tried but tend to run out of money or get sidelined by traffic mishaps (or, in the case of Cruise, both). Unlike Waymo, Zoox isn’t open to the public. It hasn’t even said when it will be. And as Waymo eyes new cities and new partnerships, Zoox is still stuck in beta mode.

But maybe it’s about to get unstuck. Inviting journalists to go for a ride is certainly a step toward a public launch.

“We’ve just tried to stay really steady, grounded, and focused on our mission, no matter what else is going on,” Zoox cofounder and CTO Jesse Levinson said during the ride. “We can certainly learn from our fellow travelers. We can be inspired when they’re doing well, and we feel like, hey, you know, this is possible. We should catch up here. And then, you know, if they make some missteps, we can learn from that and we do.”

More than 10 years and a billion dollars in investments later, Zoox is currently only available to employees and their families in San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Seattle, with more locations, including Austin and Miami, coming later this year. While most people still won’t be able to hail a Zoox anytime soon, the company will open an invite-only Zoox “Explorer” program soon, much like what Waymo did with its Early Riders.

But aside from Waymo, the broader robotaxi project seems on the verge of faltering, with companies like Cruise and Argo AI shutting down after funding dried up. China is ramping up its own efforts, alarming legislators and tech workers alike. Tesla’s Elon Musk recently vowed to launch his own robotaxi operation in June, but doubts remain about his approach to safety.

Zoox still feels like it’s behind the curve. Its business model relies on building completely bespoke autonomous vehicles, which is enormously expensive, labor-intensive, and relatively fraught, thanks to various rules and regulations. There are some questions about the company’s self-certification process for its vehicles. And its test vehicles are under investigation by NHTSA after two motorcyclists were struck last year.

To be sure, Zoox has its own fleet of retrofitted Toyota Highlander hybrids to test its software in places like San Francisco and Las Vegas. About 60 of the Highlander mules sat parked or idling in the nondescript warehouse in Las Vegas, alongside a handful of the company’s first-generation EVs in different states of disassembly.

But the Highlanders are old news. Zoox is betting all its chips on purpose-built AVs. And whether people embrace these funny-looking toasters-on-wheels will depend a lot on how they feel on the road.

The autonomous vehicles I’ve ridden in before have all had traditional controls or familiar steering wheel/brake pedal setups. They also had familiar car shapes and designs. Zoox doesn’t have any of these things.

One of the technicians opens the sliding doors of the low-floored electric vehicle using an iPad. I step inside, along with Levinson and a Zoox PR rep. The interior is spacious, resembling more the interior of a bus or a subway.

The seats are firm and covered in a woven industrial material for easy cleaning should anyone get sick or spill something. Levinson tells me that they recently updated the seats to be more comfortable based on feedback from the employees who’ve been testing them. Because the seats are facing each other, there’s not a ton of visibility out either end of the vehicle. If you easily get carsick, sitting backward may be a bad idea.

The sliding side doors offer a decent view of what’s happening off to the side of the vehicle, though the seats come up above shoulder height, blocking your direct view. There are custom airbags hidden throughout the vehicle in case of a crash, and of course, seatbelts.

Levinson and I sit next to each other while the PR rep sits across, and there’s enough space between us to cross one’s legs without bumping into anyone. We buckle up and start the ride by using one of the tablets near the door. These are the only controls in the vehicle: riders can control the temperature, ask the vehicle to pull over, check the duration of the ride, and control the audio. Presumably some of these functions will also be controllable through the app.

The route we take is a pre-determined 30-minute loop to the very edge of the Las Vegas Strip and back. It’s all local roads, no freeways, with speed limits around 45 mph. As we wind past restaurants and strip malls, we encounter construction zones, pedestrians, and other normalcies.

The first challenge comes when we arrive at a construction site with a closed right lane ahead of an intersection. While the robotaxi navigates it fine, it still feels inorganic and slightly robotic. Instead of merging before coming to the lane closure like a human driver would, the Zoox drives right up to the sign blocking the lane, comes to a full stop, signals, and waits for a relatively large gap in the traffic to merge left. It takes a full minute before traffic lets up enough that the robotaxi feels confident enough to safely move over.

Later, we encounter a pedestrian waiting to cross with the light. No issues here: the Zoox waits patiently while the person crosses, and after the light changes, away we go.

Beyond those two real-world challenges, the ride is largely uneventful, with the exception of some random and rather sudden jerky braking at the last minute when it comes to a light or a stop sign. Overall, the experience feels safe but less fully realized than a Waymo ride.

While the company says that it’s made some upgrades to things like suspension, brakes, and the electric drive units, the ride is still a bit rough, and the braking occasionally feels abrupt. With the wheels at the outer corners of the vehicle, and the body so low to the ground, rough roads (like the construction zone) and potholes are felt acutely. And since the seats have minimal padding, those undulations travel directly through your seat and into your body. That could be a problem for folks more attuned to the high-riding comfort of most modern SUVs.

Overall, the robotaxi did well, but it’s important to note that this wasn’t the first time that Zoox had driven the same route — nor was it the second or third time. There had already been at least 10 other journalists who had done the same route, not counting all the times Zoox ran the trip before inviting us aboard. Experts believe that the ability to route dynamically, without any pre-planning, is one of the most important tests of a driverless taxi service. With that in mind, Zoox still has a lot to prove.

And then there are those, for lack of a better term, pucker moments: when you cringe or brace because the autonomous vehicle is about to do something stupid. While there were a few unexpected braking moments along the way, and strangely conservative lane choices, the Zoox robotaxi never behaved in a way that made me feel unsafe.

Zoox is taking the slow and steady route to autonomy, while keeping a handle on its own design and proprietary software. Making the leap from a few test vehicles to wider success in places that aren’t always sunny with clear skies and moderate temperatures year-round is still a long way off for any robotaxi company. But Zoox thinks it has the winning formula.

“This experience that we’re having in this vehicle, there’s nothing like it now,” Levinson contends. “You can’t get that in a retrofitted car. You can’t get that in a Cybercab… We think we’re onto something.”