Zoox, Amazon’s driverless robotaxi company, has started operations in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The company began shuttling Zoox employees on a one mile stretch of public roads starting on June 16. These operations will continue for the next several months. The company has no current timeline to expand services to include customers or paying customers that they have released, according to Reuters.
The Zoox is a strange-looking vehicle with no steering wheel and no pedals. The vehicle features four inward-facing seats and has a top speed of 75 mph (120km/h), but is limited to 35 mph (56km/h) on this route to comply with local regulations.
Nevada is the second location that Zoox is operating in. The company already has an employee pilot program in Foster City, California. The company also continues to test retrofitted combustion engine cars with safety drivers on public roads in the Bay Area, along with testing Zoox vehicles on the company’s private test track using real-world conditions.
Zoox is a little behind other robotaxi companies like Waymo and Cruise. However, even those companies have just started to charge the public for use in Phoenix and San Francisco, respectively. It is not clear if Zoox will join Cruise with public operations in California or if the company will try to be the first to go live with public rides in Nevada.
