Amazon.com Inc. s self-driving unit Zoox is testing autonomous cars in Seattle, bringing the company closer to its parent company and a pool of engineers it sees as key to launching commercially.
Foster City, Calif. - Zoox will deploy a fleet of Toyota Highlander vehicles retrofitted with its sensor technology and autonomous driving software. The company hopes Seattle climate will help it prepare its technology to drive in a wider range of environments. Zoox is testing vehicles in the comparatively drier precincts of Las Vegas, San Francisco and its hometown Chicago. Zoox will also open an office in Seattle next year.
Seattle isn't yet a hot spot of autonomous vehicle engineering. But it s absolutely a hot bed of computer scientists in general, Zoox cofounder and chief technology officer Jesse Levinson said in an interview. Seattle weather is also a big reason for taking the Zoox vehicle to an inclement testing yard and seeing how water affects the sensors. A growing number of autonomous technologies startups are expanding testing beyond the Bay Area, long a focus in the nascent industry. Similar to Zoox, many are looking to create fleets of robotaxis. General Motors Co. is planning to manufacture an autonomous vehicle dubbed “The Origin”. The Detroit auto giant says it hopes to start charging for rides as soon as next year and aims to reach $50 billion in revenue, Bloomberg reported earlier this month.
Zoox assembles its vehicles at a small production facility in Fremont, Calif. The bug-eyed machines have no steering wheel or pedals and can carry four people facing one another from two seats.
Currently, Zoox is testing only the retrofitted Toyotas on private roads and declined to reveal when its own autonomous vehicle will be deployed in wild or when it will launch a commercial service.
In June 2020 Amazon announced that it was getting Zoox for an undisclosed sum. Levinson said that the e-commerce giant has been relatively hands off since then, echoing its approach with such subsidiaries as video doorbell maker Ring and Whole Foods Market.
While we are very independent from Amazon and operate separately, especially with COVID ramping down, we do look forward to spending time with folks up there, Levinson said.
The company has secured all of the relevant regulatory approvals to test in Washington and the state of Seattle, he said.