A robotaxi was being developed by Amazon’s self-driving vehicle unit, Zoox, and it has been successfully tested, as confirmed by the company.
The test was conducted on February 11 with employees as passengers.
Read on to find out all the details!
Amazon Tests Robotaxi With Employees As Passengers
In an effort to get closer to a commercial service for the general public, Amazon.com Inc.’s self-driving vehicle division, Zoox, announced on Monday that it had successfully tested a robotaxi with employees as passengers on a public road.
Jesse Levinson, the head of technology at Zoox, said the company had been cautious in its expansion but was still on track to hire 2,500 people this year, up from just under 2,000 at the start of the year.
The test was carried out on February 11 at the Zoox headquarters in Foster City, California, between two buildings that are a mile apart. The test was a part of the rollout of a free employee shuttle service that will also aid the company in improving its technology.
As per Chief Executive Aicha Evans, “Putting the vehicle on (an) open public road and validating our approach to all of the different requirements, including regulatory, is a big step and we would not have done it unless internally we were already looking at the line of sight for going commercial.”
Jesse Levinson, the head of technology at Zoox, said the company had been cautious in its expansion but was still on track to hire 2,500 people this year, up from just under 2,000 at the start of the year.
Zoox’s Robotaxi: Specifications and Details
The automated vehicle market has not taken off as quickly as anticipated because the technology has proven to be challenging to master. In the fall of last year, Ford Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG announced they would close their Argo AI self-driving unit and concentrate on driver-assistance technology with faster payoffs.
In contrast to retrofitting existing vehicles for self-driving, Zoox’s robotaxi was built from the ground up as a fully autonomous vehicle. It lacks a steering wheel and pedals and has space for four passengers, two of whom are facing each other.
Zoox was purchased by online retailer Amazon for $1.3 billion in 2020 as part of its aggressive expansion into self-driving technology.
Thoughts of a global recession were sparked by rapid interest rate increases and weak consumer demand, which forced many businesses, including automakers and tech behemoths, to reduce their workforces and recover costs.
