Amazon-owned Zoox has announced plans to deploy its purpose-built robotaxis in San Francisco and Las Vegas. Zoox co-founder and CTO, Jesse Levinson, announced the expansion at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 on Wedneday, where he shared insights into the company’s approach to autonomous technology, and why he believes Tesla’s approach won’t work.
According to Levinson, the initial deployment in San Francisco will take place within a geofenced area of SoMa, a hub for autonomous vehicle testing due to its complex urban environment. Zoox has already been testing in Las Vegas, Seattle, and around its headquarters in Foster City, California, but the San Francisco and Las Vegas rollout will be the first public-facing deployment.
The expansion will start with Zoox employees only being allowed to use the service, before eventually expanding its rideshare service through its “explorer” program, allowing early riders free access to rides before the service becomes available to paying customers in both cities next year.
Unlike traditional self-driving cars that are typically retrofitted from existing vehicle models, Zoox’s robotaxis are “purpose-built” — designed from the ground up without steering wheels, pedals, or driver’s seats, and two rows of seats facing each other.
A critical part of Zoox’s strategy involves its multi-sensor safety design, utilizing LiDAR, radar, and camera systems for full situational awareness, which Levinson believes provides an edge over Tesla’s camera-only Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology.
Levinson noted that Tesla’s FSD, while capable, may give drivers a “false sense of complacency” by relying solely on cameras, which he argues are not sufficient for true, unsupervised autonomous driving.
“Our perspective is that you really need significantly more hardware than Tesla is putting in their vehicles to build a robotaxi that is not just as safe, but especially safer than a human,” Levinson said. (via TechCrunch)
