Zoox, Amazon’s autonomous vehicle unit, is deploying a small fleet of retrofitted test vehicles on the streets of Los Angeles starting Tuesday – a modest, yet meaningful step as the company inches toward offering public rides in Las Vegas and San Francisco later this year.
The data-collection effort marks Zoox’s entrance into its sixth city and lays the groundwork for a future robotaxi service. Unlike rival Waymo, which is already providing paid robotaxi rides in LA, Zoox is still in the early stages. This deployment will send out manually driven Toyota Highlanders equipped with Zoox’s self-driving tech to gather mapping data ahead of broader autonomous testing.
Zoox is currently testing its autonomous vehicles – both the Highlanders and its purpose-built robotaxis made without a steering wheel or pedals — in several cities. Notably, Zoox has expanded the areas where its purpose-built robotaxi is testing on public roads in San Francisco and Las Vegas without a human driver. Zoox recently allowed employees, media, and other vetted guests to try the service.
The company is also testing in Austin, Miami, and Seattle using Highlanders with human safety operators behind the wheel.
The expansion in California comes a few weeks after Zoox issued a voluntary software recall on 258 vehicles due to issues with its autonomous driving system unexpectedly hard braking.
Zoox’s entry into Los Angeles follows Waymo’s launch of a fully autonomous commercial robotaxi service in the city. To date, Waymo is the only AV company in the U.S. that offers a paid service in several cities, including the Bay Area, Phoenix, and Austin. The Alphabet-owned company aims to launch a commercial service in Atlanta, Miami, and Washington D.C. over the next two years.
