What is a Zoox?
It has all the charm of one of those shopping carts with a kid car attached to the front, all the cool of a Kia Soul, and Zoox could be coming to Dallas as the latest robotaxi-type affair. Amazon announced its Zoox is expanding, which sounds like a delicate personal problem, but is actually a “purpose-built robotaxi” and not, the company says, a car. Do you hear me? It’s NOT a car.
The company is now sending a testing fleet of retrofitted SUVs (which are cars) to manually map Dallas before moving on to autonomous testing. There will always be a safety driver behind the wheel to disengage the AI if needed. The testing vehicles will be in central Dallas neighborhoods, a press release from the company says. Once everything has been mapped and tested, the robotaxis follow. It operates the Zoox (I feel ridiculous right now) in San Francisco, Las Vegas, Seattle, Austin, Miami, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Washington D.C. and is also testing them in Phoenix.
“Crucially, these markets allow us to rigorously validate our technology’s resilience in diverse and challenging weather conditions,” the company says. “In Phoenix, we have the opportunity to test our sensor and battery performance against extreme heat and dust on high-speed roads.”
What does Dallas bring? Glad you asked. “Dallas provides a valuable testing ground to refine our AI against diverse weather and complex road networks.” Potholes. We bring potholes. And floods. But mostly potholes. Good luck.
You can see the SUVs that will be out and about, as well as videos of the Zooxes (Zooxi, Zoox?) on the company’s Instagram account. Here’s a picture of one.
Zoox Robotaxi Amazon
This is a Zoox. Zoox, Inc.