[Hardware] Amazon-Owned Zoox Unveils Futuristic Autonomous Electric Robotaxi

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Earlier this year, Amazon bought Zoox, a relatively unknown company, who was working toward autonomous vehicles. At the time, Amazon consumer business CEO Jeff Wilke stated that “Zoox is working to imagine, invent, and design a world-class autonomous ride-hailing experience,” and now they have something to share. Today, Zoox posted on Twitter the first look at its all-electric ride service vehicle. After playing Cyberpunk 2077 and then seeing this video, it feels like we are taking one step closer to that future. The Zoox vehicle is setup for up to four passengers facing each other on cloth bench-style seats. Inside, riders will find touch screen displays to customize your ride by setting the music and temperature. There are also cupholders and a center console area on each side of the car for wirelessly charging devices. Look at the video for yourself, but this thing seems pretty cool.According to Zoox’s website, under the hood is a 133 kWh battery paired with a wireless charging solution to make fleet charging easy. There are also dual motors and four-wheel steering to make the already small vehicle easy to maneuver. For the passengers, there is an active suspension system, so it should feel incredibly smooth wherever your taxi is taking you.As for the passengers' safety, there is a redesigned airbag that should protect all riders equally should there be an accident. It is unlikely for that to happen, though, as the vehicle has plenty of cameras, LIDAR sensors, and RADAR sensors for a full 360-degree scan of the surroundings up to 150m away. It uses this data to compute what could happen next and then adjusts accordingly. If you are still concerned about the vehicle's overall safety, Zoox has uploaded 45 videos of autonomous driving on YouTube alongside the reveal trailer below.The vehicle, which Zoox describes as a driverless carriage or robotaxi, can carry as many as four passengers. With a motor at each end, it travels in either direction and maxes out at 75 miles per hour. Two battery packs, one under each row of seats, generate enough juice for 16 hours of run time before recharging, the company said. To commercialize the technology, Zoox plans to launch an app-based ride-hailing service in cities like San Francisco and Las Vegas.

 

 

“This is really about re-imagining transportation,” Zoox Chief Executive Officer Aicha Evans said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “Not only do we have the capital required, we have the long-term vision.” The company also plans to launch ride-hailing services in other countries, Evans said. Executives didn’t say how much rides would cost but that they would be “affordable” and competitive with services operated by Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. Nor did they say when the service would launch but confirmed it wouldn’t happen in 2021. In a video released Monday, Evans used Zoox’s app to hail the vehicle outside San Francisco’s Fairmont hotel and took a spin around the block. Acquired by Amazon in June for an undisclosed sum, Zoox is one of several companies racing to put fully autonomous vehicles on the road, an effort that’s taking longer than anticipated. Most are testing retrofitted conventional cars on public roads, and few are commercially deployed. In October, Alphabet Inc.’s self-driving unit Waymo started a fully driverless taxi service in suburban Phoenix. General Motors Co.-backed Cruise LLC is also testing autonomous cars -- recently without safety drivers -- in San Francisco, using a fleet of electric vehicles based on the Chevy Bolt.Zoox isn’t the first to unveil a fully autonomous passenger vehicle. GM’s Cruise showed off a battery-powered shuttle in January. Called the Origin, it also does away with many of the controls present in conventional cars: pedals, rearview mirrors, steering wheel. Cruise plans to commercialize the Origin through a ride-sharing service and says it’s cheaper to run than a conventional car. Zoox’s vehicle is similar but smaller. On each corner a “sensor pod” houses a spinning laser sensor and other lidars and as well as cameras to help it navigate. A pair of front-facing cameras sit atop of the vehicle, with other less-visible sensors mounted on the sides. Each corner pod has a 270-degree field of vision, enabling the car to see more than 360 degrees of terrain at once.The vehicle’s safety features include airbags that form a cocoon around each passenger in the event of a crash, which Zoox says is unlikely given its confidence in the technology. The company can manually operate the vehicles remotely and communicate with passengers in real time. For those worried about privacy, Zoox says passengers will have the option to blur images captured by the on-board camera. When Amazon acquired Zoox, industry watchers speculated that the e-commerce giant eventually planned to deploy fleets of driverless delivery vehicles. In the interview, Evans said there are currently no plans to do so but acknowledged that “at some point we could move packages.”