Zoox Finally Reveals Its Custom Robotaxi - FORBES
Foster City, California-based Zoox has finally unveiled the purpose-built automated robotaxi it has been promising. Unlike many of the startups that sprang up in the San Francisco Bay area over the half-decade, Zoox committed from the start to developing a fully automated vehicle specifically designed for ride-hailing and along with the service to deploy it.
On the surface, the Zoox vehicle looks similar to many other automated pod shuttle vehicles we’ve seen in recent years from the Local Motors Ollie to the Cruise Origin. It’s basically a rounded corner box with four wheels and festooned with sensors.
Zoox robotaxi
However, the Zoox team led by CEO Aicha Evans and co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson has developed something quite a bit more ambitious than what we’ve seen from other companies to date. The Cruise Origin which was co-developed by General Motors GM -0.3% and Honda is perhaps the closest to what Zoox had created. It is a battery electric vehicle with carriage seating (seats on both sides facing the center so everyone gets the same experience) and has sliding doors on both sides.
Zoox Robotaxi
However, the Zoox vehicle is different in many respects. First off, it’s completely symmetrical and able to operate in both directions to its full capability. It’s also designed for operations up to 75 mph so it could for example provide service from downtown San Francisco to the airport going down highway 101.
Zoox robotaxi
Rather than being fully enclosed by the bodywork, the wheels are external and feature bicycle fenders. This enables four wheel steering with greater angles so the vehicle has a turn radius of just over 28 feet. The vehicle is 11.9 feet long overall, more than a foot shorter than a Honda Fit. Each top corner has a pod of sensors including cameras, radar and a total of eight lidar sensors. Those corner pods each provide a 270 degree field of view with plenty of overlap for redundancy if any one sensor or pod fails.
Zoox robotaxi
The body also has a unique new lighting system that provides indications to pedestrians and other road users of what the vehicle is about to do. Ford has developed a similar system for its upcoming AVs and has been using it on its test fleet for the past two years although it’s not known if they are coordinating to standardize the types of signals provided.
In addition to seat-belts for all four passengers, Zoox has a new airbag system that emerges from the sides and wraps around each of the seating positions providing full and equal protection to each passenger regardless of which seat they are in. The vehicle has been crash tested in both directions and provides equal protection to all passengers, something that can’t really be said for any other vehicle on the road. Each seating position also has a wireless charging pad for phones, cupholder and a touchscreen interface.
Zoox Robotaxi
As with the Origin and many other robotaxi vehicles, the Zoox is fully electric. There is a 133-kWh battery under the floor which is claimed to provide 16 hours of operation even with all of the sensing and compute hardware on board. Few other technical details are available right now.
Zoox had originally hoped to launch commercial operations this year, but that clearly isn’t going to happen and it’s not clear when it will although the company is testing vehicles in both San Francisco and Las Vegas. After failing to raise a series D funding round, the company put itself up for sale and was acquired by Amazon AMZN -0.3% for $1.2 billion. For now at least Amazon and Zoox remain publicly committed to the robotaxi vision, although it would not be a surprise if this vehicle was adapted into a mobile Amazon locker for contactless urban deliveries.
Zoox Robotaxi
Given that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has yet to approve waivers for vehicles like the Origin and Zoox to operate without complying with certain current motor vehicle safety standards that require human controls, mirrors and other devices not needed for an automated vehicle, it’s not clear if commercial services would be able to start before 2022 at the earliest.