Amazon's robotaxi looks to be Waymo's biggest competitor

Amazon has unveiled its latest big bet as it looks to usurp a share of the self-driving car market from Waymo, announcing last week that it has opened its own autonomous vehicle production facility. The plant will eventually be able to produce self-driving robotaxis from the Amazon-owned Zoox on a large scale, the company said. This marks the latest in Amazon's efforts to gain steam on the Google-owned Waymo.

High output

The factory, located in Hayward, California, near Silicon Valley, is the "first-ever serial production facility for purpose-built robotaxis in the U.S.," said Zoox in a press release. The new facility encompasses 220,000 square feet, the equivalent of more than three football fields, and will be "utilized for planned growth and robotaxi services at Zoox across multiple markets."

This represents a significant ramp-up for Zoox, which was purchased by Amazon in 2020 for $1.2 billion. Once the factory reaches full scale, it will have the "capacity to assemble 10,000 robotaxis a year, with roughly three robotaxis being produced per hour," said CNBC.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Competing with Waymo

The Amazon-Zoox partnership is "one of several companies vying to secure a foothold in the market for autonomous ridehailing," said Bloomberg. Beyond this, Tesla is also looking to jump into the autonomous car battle, and "plans to begin offering rides in Austin with no driver behind the wheel." But Zoox is moving ahead regardless of competitors and already has robotaxis operating in Austin, Texas, as well as Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco.

But for now, Waymo claims to remain far ahead, and says it has "recorded more than 10 million paid rides while other would-be rivals such as Amazon and Tesla are still fine-tuning their self-driving technology and tackling how to ramp up their fleet," said The Associated Press. Despite this, Zoox feels it has a competitive edge, and "believes it can lure passengers with vehicles that look more like carriages than cars, with seating for up to four passengers" who face each other. These vehicles, unlike Zoox's competitors, do not have a steering wheel or pedals. Waymo, on the other hand, adds its self-driving features onto existing car models, often "making its robotaxi look similar to vehicles steered by humans."

It could still be an uphill battle for Zoox and Amazon, though, as the two companies and Tesla have "faced federal investigations and recalls following collisions" of autonomous vehicles, said Reuters. There are also regulatory hurdles that Zoox would have to get through, most notably because of its lack of a steering wheel. As a result, the company "would need an exemption from U.S. auto safety rules that require vehicles to have driver controls," said Bloomberg. The Trump administration has said "it's working on changes to provide those approvals faster." These talks with the Trump administration and various safety bodies are "going well," said Zoox CEO Aicha Evans to Bloomberg.

The "reality is we are just ready," Evans said. The company's strategy is to begin "putting the capacity in place and then turning it on little by little as we go city by city." Zoox plans to start launching its full commercial service later in 2025, and the company claims its pricing will be "competitive."