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FollowingAmazon Zoox receives federal approval to launch a driverless taxi charging service
On Thursday, Amazon's Zoox received federal approval to begin charging passengers for driverless taxis without steering wheels and pedals. The approval from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) gave Jeff Bezos a victory over Elon Musk in the race to push driverless cars onto city streets.
Has Zoox surpassed Tesla?
For the first time, the U.S. government has approved a vehicle without any manual controls at all. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has given the green light to Amazon's autonomous driving division Zoox, allowing it to charge driverless taxi passengers without a steering wheel or pedals. It is worth noting that Zoox is licensed to operate even though federal safety regulations still assume that the driver is behind the wheel. The company has previously provided free passengers in Las Vegas and San Francisco, and provided free services in Austin and Miami. It will be the first to launch a paid ride-hailing service in Las Vegas and plans to expand to other cities after meeting state and local regulations.
The company said that before the approval, more than 500,000 people had ridden on its vehicles, with a cumulative mileage of more than 3 million miles. Meanwhile, Tesla is still testing its "Cybercab" driverless taxi, which also has no steering wheel, but Tesla is still using vehicles with steering wheels and pedals to provide paid ride-riding services.
Are Bezos and Musk competitors?
Bezos and Musk have already competed in space exploration, and Blue Origin and SpaceX are both developing landers for NASA's Artemis program. The approval puts Amazon ahead of Tesla in ground transportation, but the approval comes with strict rules that can be revoked at any time if safety issues arise. Highway and automobile safety advocacy groups said Zoox failed to provide enough evidence that a vehicle without standard controls was safe to drive on public roads.
Earlier this month, Zoox recalled all 105 of its driverless taxis in operation to fix software that may have ignored smoke problems. NHTSA Director Jonathan Morrison said the vehicles met safety standards set for traditional cars, but added that the agency wanted long-term proof that its driving systems were working well.
Zoox is a company acquired by Amazon for US$1.2 billion. Its vehicles look like carriages and are completely designed for autonomous driving. The car has opposing benches and can reach a top speed of 75 miles per hour. The company's long-term plan is to build a factory near Silicon Valley that can produce as many as 10,000 driverless taxis a year. Under current licenses, Zoox can deploy up to 2500 vehicles per year for the next two years, but the company now faces stricter regulations, including reports of additional accidents and reports of vehicles parked where they should not.
It is worth noting that Musk once called Bezos a "copycat" when Amazon acquired Zoox in 2020. Both companies currently lag behind Alphabet's Waymo, which already operates in more than 10 cities and completes approximately 500,000 trips a week.
