Amazon's Zoox Wins First US Approval For Paid Robotaxis Without Human Controls (reuters.com)
- Reference: 0184773428
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/07/30/1823204/amazons-zoox-wins-first-us-approval-for-paid-robotaxis-without-human-controls
- Source link: https://www.reuters.com/world/amazons-zoox-wins-first-us-approval-paid-robotaxis-with-no-human-controls-2026-07-30/
> Amazon's Zoox unit has won U.S. approval for [1]limited commercial deployment of its novel steering-wheel-free robotaxis , a first for the autonomous ride industry, the U.S. auto safety agency said on Thursday. Zoox said that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's decision gives the company federal approval to begin charging for rides, and that it will soon begin charging for service, first in Las Vegas, with additional markets to follow as it completes various state requirements.
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> [...] NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison told Reuters that Zoox had received clearance to commercially deploy up to 2,500 vehicles in each of the next two years. Zoox currently carries passengers in parts of Las Vegas and San Francisco as part of testing. The exemption would allow Zoox to charge them fees, subject to state and local approvals. The agency said it determined the vehicle is as safe as an equivalent vehicle meeting federal motor vehicle safety standards that are being waived. Zoox cannot sell any of the vehicles to the public.
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> "We can say pretty clearly that the systems in place on the Zoox exceed the equivalent performance requirements of a compliant vehicle," Morrison said in an interview. "But we still want to make sure that the automated driving system will operate appropriately." As part of the exemption, NHTSA is placing additional reporting requirements on Zoox for issues such as crashes or stopping inappropriately on roads, and the regulatory agency will adjust the conditions based on how the vehicles behave. "We have the ability to pull the exemption if we see major safety issues," Morrison said.
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> All remote operators must be located in the United States, NHTSA said, and Zoox must publish maps of areas indicating where the vehicles are operating. Morrison said NHTSA expects to develop the first federal safety standards for automated driving systems by the end of the Trump administration. It is also proposing to overhaul some existing rules written with human drivers in mind such as requiring brake pedals and rear-view mirrors.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/amazons-zoox-wins-first-us-approval-paid-robotaxis-with-no-human-controls-2026-07-30/
Huh? (Score:2)
So have Waymo and Tesla robotaxis been operating for free all this time?
Re: (Score:3)
> So have Waymo and Tesla robotaxis been operating for free all this time?
Maybe the "paid" part was to avoid any assumptions that the robotaxies might offer free shuttle service to your nearest Whole Foods with a Prime membership.
Re: (Score:2)
Do they have inside door handles, or are the doors locked until you reach Whole Foods?
Re: (Score:2)
You're right. The issue is my lack of reading comprehension.
Re: (Score:2)
They have steering wheels.
Terrorists' Eyes Aglow (Score:2)
Expect big chunks of the limited budgets of various terrorist orgs to divert into upskilling for hacking these vehicles and gaining the ability to take full remote control, at any time, for any desired operation.
Re: (Score:2)
Why bother, just plant some sleeper agents in the Phillipines who control these remotely. Much cheaper.
Automated death trap (Score:2)
Cant wait to never ride in one
Background (Score:2)
I admit that before now I hadn't even heard of this one.
Wikipedia article: [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Their website: [2]https://zoox.com/ [zoox.com]
News article: [3]https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoox
[2] https://zoox.com/
[3] https://www.usatoday.com/story/cars/news/2026/07/09/zoox-robotaxi-service-popular-waymo-tesla/90847149007/
Re: (Score:2)
That was supposed to say "from the Philippines". Stupid autocorrect.
My phone does offer "autocorrect" as an option after "stupid" though, so there's that.
Now the AI chatbot calling me Chinese will have to switch to calling me filipino :)
Re: (Score:2)
Just because Google is cheating doesn't mean it's an insurmountable task to make an autonomous vehicle that drives slightly better than humans do. There's actually plenty of examples on YouTube of Tesla's FSD avoiding collisions, and I just saw on .eddit the other day [1]someone on an e-scooter avoided being hit because the car itself reacted faster than the human driver. [reddit.com]
Now, I'm not saying the technology is perfect. There's a rather hilarious video on YouTube of a test setup with a paper facade designed to
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ElectricScooters/comments/1v97ml8/almost_got_hit_lucky_it_was_a_tesla/
Re: (Score:2)
IIRC the accident statistics on Tesla and Google auto-driving vehicles show that they're safer than an average newly minted 16 year-old driver, and we've (almost) all been that person at one time.
Re: (Score:2)
> Just because Google is cheating doesn't mean it's an insurmountable task to make an autonomous vehicle that drives slightly better than humans do.
What does "drive better than humans" mean? Drive better in all possible scenarios? That's likely impossible now and probably forever. Maybe driver better in a majority of scenarios weighted by occurrence probability? Maybe, but we don't currently have the technology to validate this requirement.
Currently, we can cherry pick scenarios where some autonomous vehicles perform better or worse than the best drivers. What does that mean? Well, not much as a generalization for all AVs in all scenarios. Certa
Re: Are they using the same call center (Score:3)
"There's actually plenty of examples on YouTube of Tesla's FSD avoiding collisions"
And there's actual court cases about Tesla's FSD mistaking the side of a trailer for the sky and driving under it, or going full speed towards a barrier and then disabling itself a fraction of a second before the collision so they can claim FSD didn't cause the accident because it wasn't in control at the time. Well guess what, neither was anyone else, and Tesla set them up for that.