A Zoox robotaxi sits outside the company's large office and warehouse in Las Vegas.
Michael Wayland/CNBC
LAS VEGAS — This year is expected to be a pivotal year from Amazon autonomous vehicle unit Zoox, as the company plans to expand its operations and commercialize its robotaxi business.
Zoox aims to offer rides to the public “fairly quickly,” expand its operating regions and grow its self-driving fleet “significantly” from the several dozen it currently operates, according to co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Jesse Levinson.
“That's a lot of work, but we're happy with that,” Levinson said during a 40-minute ride through Las Vegas in one of the company's robotaxis. “We're quite pleased with the progress we've made.”
Zoox's plans come even as some investors have lost enthusiasm for autonomous vehicles. And they're not the only ones, as older automakers like General engines, Ford engine And Volkswagen have disbanded self-driving units in recent years.
Zoox – founded ten years ago and bought by Amazon for $1.3 billion in 2020 – has been testing its purpose-built robotaxis on public roads since early 2023. The company is currently testing the vehicles, which do not have manual controls such as a steering wheel or pedals, in three cities: Las Vegas, San Francisco and Foster City, California, where its headquarters are located.
A row of Zoox robotaxis sits in the company's large office and warehouse in Las Vegas.
Michael Wayland/CNBC
Las Vegas is expected to be Zoox's first commercial market. The company hopes to launch an “Early Rider Program” in Sin City in the coming months before opening it to the general public later this year. San Francisco, where Zoox began testing in November 2024, will follow, the company said.
Levinson said Zoox is also eyeing an expansion into Miami; Austin, TX; and others, but the company has not announced a firm schedule for those cities.
“Hopefully by the end of this decade, when you're in most major cities in the U.S., this will be your preferred way to get around,” Levinson said.
Amazon does not publicly disclose its investments in Zoox or other start-up companies, saying such investments are viewed as emerging, long-term initiatives to benefit the company and its customers.
Riding in a robotaxi
The Zoox robotaxi stands out from others because it was developed from the start not to have a human driver. That's a different path then Alphabet-backed Waymo – the US leader in robotaxis – which has adapted traditional vehicles to have autonomous vehicle capabilities.
Zoox co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Jesse Levinson
Courtesy image
Some have described vehicles, such as Zoox's robotaxis, as “boxes” or “toasters.” The doors open from the center, with rows of seats facing each other, and there is no room for a driver. GM's Cruise also had plans to launch such a vehicle, the Origin, but canceled production as the company ran into trouble in October 2023 after an accident involving a pedestrian.
“The vehicle itself, I think, is quite interesting,” Sam Abuelsamid, an autonomous expert and vice president of market research at Telemetry Insights, said of Zoox. “It's the right size vehicle, the right form factor.”
Driving around the edge of the Las Vegas Strip on a sunny morning, Zoox's autonomous vehicle performed well. He turned as he should and drove assertively, but not aggressively. There were some questionable choices during the ride, such as choosing to stay in a long line of vehicles and not navigating around a large trailer, but overall the vehicle functioned as it should.
Assertive driving is something the Amazon-backed company has been working on through years of testing, Levinson said. An autonomous vehicle can't break the laws like many human drivers, but it also can't be too careful or aggressive, which could lead to accidents or incidents with other human drivers.
Future of the company
Test vehicles and record data in Zoox's large office and warehouse in Las Vegas.
Michael Wayland/CNBC
If Zoox can grow as planned and begin commercial operations this year, it would arguably be second only to Waymo in the robotaxi sector.
“I don't want to suggest that it will be a commercially meaningful business this year… but it will be useful in the sense that customers can get value from it and actually use it to go somewhere. We're excited about that about,” Zoox's Levinson said, “We've taken a fairly conservative and steady approach to scaling and rolling out, just because of the safety-critical nature.”
GM's autonomous vehicle unit Cruise was considered a leader along with Waymo until the company grounded its robotaxi fleet and announced the end of its commercial operations late last year. This came after an accident in October 2023 in which external investigations revealed that the company had misled or deceived regulators about the incident.
Providing public rides is just another step in the challenging commercialization of autonomous vehicles. Waymo began offering guided rides to the public in Arizona in 2017, followed by unattended driverless rides in 2019. It has slowly expanded to hundreds of autonomous vehicles in four markets that now operate more than 150,000 paid rides per week.
“From a technology perspective, I think Zoox is going in the right direction. What I'm a little less convinced about is the business model,” Abuelsamid said. “The technology is maturing. It's still not perfect, but it's getting better.
“But everyone is trying to figure out what is the operating model that will actually be able to cover costs and make this money,” he continued.
The robotaxi industry has proven to be a much bigger challenge than many thought by the late 2010s, when GM, Waymo, Lyft, Uber and many others entered the market with grand ambitions to commercialize the technology and remove the human driver from driving.
Companies have proven that self-driving vehicles can work, but the costs are much greater than initially expected and the payback period is longer than expected. Not to mention that several people reported problems on the road and faced uncertainty around regulations and liability.
Others, most notably Tesla, have expressed ambitions for robotaxi companies but have failed to develop self-driving vehicles or commercial self-driving taxi operations.
Meanwhile, Waymo continues to expand. Last year, it announced an expanded partnership with Uber to bring its robotaxi services to Austin and Atlanta only through the Uber app in early 2025. Waymo also expects to expand to Miami in early 2026.
“They are definitely the leader,” Abuelsamid said. “They are the only ones operating a true robotaxi service today at any scale; they are by far the largest.”