About five miles west of the Las Vegas Strip, on a sweltering day in October, I carefully weave through roads teeming with traffic and construction. Though perhaps I shouldn’t say “I,” as I’m not actually the one driving. In fact, no one is.
I’m sitting in a Zoox robotaxi, sheltered from the dry desert heat and, most notably, the stress of driving. The boxy, autonomous vehicle looks unlike any car I’ve ever seen, let alone ridden in. The company calls it a “carriage-style” design; there’s no steering wheel, pedals or driver’s seat. A pair of sliding doors sit to my left and right, and two seats on each side face a spacious center with plenty of legroom. This is a passenger-only vehicle.
As we charge down a three-lane road going 45 miles an hour, I marvel at how what was once a sci-fi fantasy has become reality. Despite being in an incredibly futuristic-looking, AI-loaded vehicle, I feel oddly at ease as I watch a stream of cars, chain restaurants and desert landscape flash past the windows enveloping the robotaxi. It strikes me how something so extraordinary can still feel so ordinary.
“That’s what we like to hear,” Justin Windus, Zoox’s director of fleet operations, says as I express this sentiment during our ride.
While self-driving tech has long been touted as the transportation of the future, a handful of companies are racing to bring it to the masses in the coming years. One of the top players is Alphabet-owned Waymo, which has been operating a driverless rideshare service since 2020 and is in cities including San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles. General Motors-owned Cruise also opened up its driverless fleet to the public in 2022 but paused operations last year after one of its vehicles in San Francisco struck a pedestrian, who was initially hit by a human driver (Cruise has since resumed operating manual and supervised rides in certain cities). And in October, Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled a prototype of Tesla’s long-awaited Robotaxi, declaring an ambitious goal to enter production “before 2027.”
But Amazon-owned Zoox is hoping its “purpose-built robotaxi,” as the company calls it, helps it stand out from the rest. Unlike riding aboard one of Waymo’s retrofitted Jaguar I-Pace vehicles (or, previously, Cruise’s retrofitted Chevy Bolt), you won’t see an empty driver’s seat and steering wheel turning on its own as you make your way through town.
Zoox has been testing its robotaxis in Foster City, California, as well as in Las Vegas and San Francisco.
Instead, Zoox’s robotaxi is designed from the ground up just for passengers – hence the lack of a steering wheel altogether. Next to each seat is a touchscreen for controlling temperature, playing music or looking at a route map. The robotaxi is symmetrical and bidirectional, so it’ll never have to reverse out of a parking spot. And like Waymo’s and Cruise’s fleets, it’s all-electric.
Both Waymo and Cruise have shared visions for adapting their vehicles to better accommodate passengers, adding legroom, headroom and sometimes nixing steering wheels too. In August, Waymo unveiled its next-generation driving system that’s being tested aboard the all-electric Zeekr vehicle, which features a removable steering wheel and pedals. (This option isn’t yet available to public riders.) And Cruise once planned to deploy its own fleet of boxy vehicles without a steering wheel or pedals, but it has since scrapped that mission indefinitely.
Zoox hopes to make a strong first impression by deploying its purpose-built robotaxi out of the gate, instead of gradually working toward a rider-focused vehicle like its competitors. It plans to launch commercially in the coming months, starting in Las Vegas.
At TechCrunch Disrupt in late October, Zoox co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson said the company would start deploying its robotaxis in San Francisco and the Las Vegas Strip “over the next couple of weeks,” eventually welcoming early test riders. Sure enough, by early November, the robotaxis were seen roaming the streets of San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood, as well as the Vegas Strip – but still for employees only.
Launching commercially in Vegas first will allow Zoox to “highlight the value of a robotaxi to a very broad audience,” says Chris Stoffel, the company’s director of industrial and creative design. “In the future, when we do come to their city, [riders] will be familiar with it and they’ll be excited for it.”
The demo route I took was a few miles from the Las Vegas Strip. One part of the ride stood out most. While going down a three-lane road, our vehicle encountered a lane closure ahead. Without hesitation, it turned on its left turn signal and merged into the adjacent lane, smoothly dodging the orange cones. When the construction zone ended, it signaled right and went back to that lane to make a turn (and at a red light, I might add).
This moment is a snapshot of the progress Zoox has made since deploying its robotaxi on Vegas public roads in 2023, Windus says.
“We started off on a very small, contained route,” he says, in which the vehicles could go only 35 miles an hour in a single lane. “As we graduate to going out to the Strip, it’s going to be more dynamic. We’re gonna be going into different drop-off areas, with multiple pedestrians around.”
That’ll be the real test.
Building a ground-up robotaxi
Zoox’s journey to a commercial launch has been a decade in the making. Since its founding in 2014, the company has been fine-tuning not only the design of its vehicle but also its self-driving tech.
In 2022, two years after being acquired by Amazon, Zoox self-certified its robotaxi to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, which govern a vehicle’s design, construction and performance. The following year, the California Department of Motor Vehicles granted Zoox a driverless testing permit to operate autonomously on the state’s public roads. Soon after, the Nevada DMV followed suit.
Zoox robotaxis have room for four passengers — no driver’s seat here.
Zoox relies on a fleet of retrofitted Toyota Highlander hybrids to map areas and ensure software is ready for autonomous rides. That test fleet currently operates in San Francisco, Las Vegas, Seattle, Miami and Austin, as well as around Zoox’s headquarters in Foster City, California (where the company is also testing its robotaxis with employees, for now). The Highlanders feature the same sensor hardware as the robotaxis, so that all the data they collect can be directly transferred to that final, rider-only iteration. That hardware includes lidar, radar and cameras to allow the vehicles to navigate without a driver.
“We also were looking for a vehicle where we could get the sensor positions as close as possible to where they are on the ground-up vehicle,” says Michael Lemperle, director of manufacturing engineering.
In Las Vegas, dozens of those test vehicles, as well as a handful of robotaxis (Zoox doesn’t share how many vehicles it has in operation), populate a spacious 190,000-square-foot warehouse, where employees buzz about maintaining the vehicles and swapping shifts behind the wheel of the test fleet. Just outside is where we begin our 5-mile loop around town.
Zoox builds its robotaxis and retrofits its test fleet at a 150,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Fremont, California. It plans to expand the factory and add additional manufacturing facilities in the near future.
Robotaxi assembly starts with a carbon fiber body that’s produced in Europe and shipped to Zoox’s manufacturing facility. From there, workers install wire harnesses, electronic control units, batteries and the suspension system, and then add the sensors and cameras to the outside. After the essential hardware is installed, workers put the finishing touches on the vehicle’s interior.
Testing takes place throughout the manufacturing process to ensure everything’s working as needed. More extensive testing happens once assembly is complete, which includes conducting the vehicle’s first autonomous drive. From there, the robotaxi is handed to the service team, which then guides it onto public roads.
Controlling everything from design to manufacturing to operations makes it easier to quickly adjust vehicles based on rider feedback or technological developments. That includes swapping out sensors as needed without manufacturing a whole new vehicle, which will be critical as AI continues to advance at a rapid pace.
“It’s gonna be moving very quickly,” Stoffel says. “We’re gonna get new riders continually and new expectations. I think being able to provide continual improvement to our riders and to the public in general is gonna be really key to staying on top of those expectations.”
Bringing Zoox to public riders
During a September visit to Zoox’s Foster City headquarters, I was among a small group of press invited into the company’s design studio for the first time. Tall, white metal shelves stood stacked with various seat cushion designs and fabrics, ranging from beiges to blues to greens (the final seats are a soft green, to match the “aloe” exterior of the vehicle).
Several pieces of concept art, from rough sketches to more formal renderings, lined the walls. Some depicted bustling cities, with people sitting at tables and making their way down tree-lined sidewalks as Zoox robotaxis seamlessly inhabited the futuristic utopia.
What stood out to me most was how similar an early sketch from nearly a decade ago encapsulated Zoox’s current “carriage-style” design. The drawing depicts the vehicle’s signature boxy, symmetrical shape, with seats facing each other.
“Our vehicle design, our convictions in the beginning, have been continually validated throughout our R&D process,” Stoffel told me later. “And now that we’re getting the vehicle on public roads and getting more feedback, that is continually validated.”
An early sketch of a Zoox robotaxi depicts the “carriage-style” seating arrangement and symmetrical vehicle design.
But with plenty of other transportation options already out there, why would someone opt for a self-driving ride? Stoffel says the biggest advantage is being able to relax and enjoy privacy on the road.
“Nothing is demanding your attention by design,” he says. “If you want to just get in and sleep, we’ve got you for your entire ride. If you want to have a conversation, if you want to be on a very critical call or a very sensitive call, there’s no one that’s gonna be listening in on that conversation. If you want to play your music as loud as you possibly want to or listen to whatever you’d like to listen to, absolutely you can do that as well.”
Despite the potential advantages of hailing an autonomous ride, there’s still plenty of apprehension among communities and drivers about the rollout of these vehicles on public roads. The biggest concern, of course, revolves around safety. Can a machine really be as cognizant as a human driver?
Companies like Waymo, Cruise and Zoox have all addressed that concern with reports touting the safety of their respective vehicles and technology. They’ve also all pointed to data on the dangers of human driver error.
In September, Waymo published a data hub stating that over 22 million miles, its self-driving tech was involved in “73% fewer injury-causing crashes and 48% fewer police-reported crashes compared to human drivers.” A 2022 Cruise report states that “there is no ambiguity that human driving mistakes are one of the most substantial factors causing roadway injuries and deaths.” And in an open letter last year, Zoox’s chief safety innovation officer noted that, “Data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows that 94% of crashes are caused by human choice or error.”
But these companies have all still encountered regulatory hurdles. Along with Cruise’s suspension in California in 2023, Waymo’s vehicles have also been involved in a handful of high-profile collisions, including one with a biker in San Francisco and another with a towed pickup truck in Phoenix. (The company recalled and updated its software to address the issue.) And in May, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched investigations into both Waymo and Zoox for incidents in which company vehicles behaved erratically. That includes Waymo vehicles colliding with parked vehicles and sudden braking on Zoox’s test fleet, according to the NHTSA.
Lots full of human-parked vehicles also don’t honk at each other long into the night, as a squad of Waymo vehicles were doing back in August.
Still, Waymo, Cruise and Zoox have all suggested that driverless tech and AI could actually curb deaths and injuries on the road by ensuring vehicles are doing exactly what they need to, without distraction. But it may take some time – and rider experience – to get the wider public to share in those beliefs.
For Zoox’s part, it says it’s also worked with first responders to ensure they know how to handle any incidents involving the company’s robotaxis, since the design is so unique. Riders in the vehicle can contact emergency services both from the touchscreen next to their seat and from an emergency button on the vehicle’s roof. After pushing either button, Zoox customer service will transfer that connection to the appropriate first responder.
There’s also what the company calls a “horseshoe airbag” that’ll deploy if the vehicle gets in an accident. It’ll inflate from the top and envelop each rider to protect them from the sides of the robotaxi (which, I’ll note, includes a lot of glass).
“Safety is foundational to Zoox, and we want to make sure everybody is aware of all of the safety features of our vehicle,” Windus says.
Given the lukewarm reception robotaxis have received in some areas, with multiple reports of vandalism to autonomous vehicles from Waymo and Cruise, Zoox is thinking carefully about how to introduce its out-of-the-ordinary vehicles to those it shares the road with – especially as it launches in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, which is teeming with pedestrians, drivers and bikers.
Zoox is outfitted with emergency buttons on the roof, as well as on the touchscreens next to each passenger.
“Part of our approach was to design a vehicle that looked timeless, approachable and very honest with what it was, so that at least it inspired people to ask, ‘What was that?’ if they were maybe a little bit apprehensive, and for those that were really enthusiastic, to say, ‘Yes, I wanna get into it,'” Stoffel says. The robotaxi also plays an “aura” sound, which consists of a set of gentle musical notes, to make its presence known not only to approaching riders but also to pedestrians and cyclists. “We’re really trying to be a great steward to the cities that we operate in, for both those inside the vehicle and outside the vehicle.”
Zoox’s robotaxis can’t currently accommodate a wheelchair, but the company says it hopes that capability comes in the near future. (Cruise unveiled a wheelchair-accessible self-driving vehicle last year called Wav, which has yet to hit public roads, as the company’s operations were suspended shortly after.)
Back in Vegas, I’m nearing the end of my Zoox ride. The robotaxi turns back into the parking lot outside the company warehouse and pulls up at the curb. I hit the toggle on the touchscreen to my left to open the sliding doors. Not only have I arrived unscathed, but I’ve also overcome the biggest personal challenge: I didn’t get carsick.
For now, it’s time to hop back in my human-driven rental car and go about my day. But as Zoox sees it, it won’t be long before that’ll all change.
Check out the video above for my ride-along in Zoox’s robotaxi, and a behind-the-scenes look at how the company builds and deploys its vehicles.
