Zoox custom robotaxis are finally coming to San Francisco and Las Vegas
Amazon-owned AV company Zoox will start rolling out dozens of its purpose-built autonomous vehicle in San Francisco and in Las Vegas in the coming weeks,
Amazon-owned AV company Zoox will start rolling out dozens of its purpose-built autonomous vehicle in San Francisco and in Las Vegas in the coming weeks, co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson announced on the TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 stage.
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Levinson said that Zoox will start offering rides — starting with employees — in the SoMa neighborhood of San Francisco, and on the Las Vegas Strip. Levinson told TechCrunch on the sidelines that Zoox is starting with SoMa even though it’s more difficult in part because the company has a operations in the area.
“We have achieved that internal safety readiness” required to launch the service, he said on stage.
The announcement comes a decade after Zoox was founded and four years since it was acquired by Amazon and unveiled its purpose-built robotaxi. In that time, the nascent autonomous vehicle industry has gone through the full hype cycle that led to multi-billion-dollar valuations and later a wave of shutdowns and consolidation.
“We still exist,” Levinson said, in a nod to the tumult the industry has gone through in recent years.
Levinson said Zoox is going to take a “measured approach” to rolling out its robotaxi service, and noted that his company has been working closely with local and federal safety regulators.
“I can say that in the next few weeks, we’re actually going to have a couple dozen Zoox robotaxis across our Foster City, San Francisco and Las Vegas, geofences that will expand several fold over the next year,” he said. “And then, you know, 2026 is when we’re going to really start cranking out production vehicles at very large scale.”