HIGHLIGHTS
- Amazon’s self-driving car completed a public road trip on February 11
- After the trial, the company’s CEO said it has a commercial launch in sight
- Zoox, along with Waymo and others, are all working on autonomous cars
Amazon’s autonomous car division, Zoox, recently completed a milestone of a fully autonomous public road drive with passengers on its ‘robotaxis’. The startup, backed and owned by the e-commerce and cloud major, achieved the historic feat on February 11, and claimed it was one of the first attempts in the world when a fully autonomous vehicle ferried passengers as part of a commercial service. Had been brought from one destination to another.
Amazon self-driving car: everything you need to know
Robotaxis is an electric car that was unveiled in December 2020. The EV does not feature steering or pedals and can accommodate four passengers, with two passengers on each side facing each other. Its maximum speed is 75 mph (120 kph). It comes with two battery packs, with one under each row of seats. The vehicle can run for up to 16 hours before recharging.
Zoox chief Aicha Evans said in a press conference after the trial that the company is already looking “line of sight” towards a commercial launch of the service. However, there is still no concrete timeline for the rollout of the service.
Zoox completed a roughly 1.6-kilometer run between two buildings of his own office complex in California with the robotaxi. The first public salvo of Amazon’s autonomous car project came as part of its employee shuttle service, but the actual passengers turned out to be two company employees — while a future project could include outside passengers as well.
The exploit also underscored the work on autonomous vehicle safety since the death of Uber in March 2018. The incident, in which a pedestrian died after being run over by a self-driving car, slowed down real-world public road tests. field, leading companies to be more careful in creating sensors that can replicate human instincts and discretion.
To be sure, this isn’t the first worldwide attempt by an autonomous vehicle maker to test on a public road. In October 2019, Google-backed Waymo conducted public road tests of its self-driving cars with a limited set of riders who signed up for its autonomous vehicle test service. The test was a precursor to the company’s possible launch of a commercial autonomous cab service in the near future.
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