After Elon Musk’s Tesla and Google’s Waymo, Amazon launches robotaxi services in US; free rides available in this city

Amazon has officially entered the US robotaxi market with the public launch of its Zoox service in Las Vegas. The company, which acquired Zoox for $1.3 billion five years ago, is offering free rides on the Las Vegas strip with plans to expand across the city in the coming months. Zoox's electric robotaxi is unique in its design, with no steering wheel or pedals. This distinguishes it from competitors like Google's Waymo, which has offered commercial driverless rides since 2020, and Elon Musk's Tesla, which began testing a limited service in Austin in June. Zoox is currently waiting on regulatory approval to start charging for rides.In an interview with CNBC in Las Vegas, Zoox co-founder and technology chief Jesse Levinson said: “We use robotaxi or vehicle or Zoox. You can shoehorn a robotaxi into something that used to be a car. It’s just not an ideal solution. We wanted to do that hard work and take the time and invest in that, and then bring something to market that’s just much better than a car.”Founded in 2014, Zoox came five years after Google launched the project that later became Waymo. After Las Vegas, the company announced plans to introduce an early rider program in San Francisco before the end of the year. Currently, Zoox operates a fleet of 50 robotaxis in San Francisco and Las Vegas.The company is set to add Austin and Miami as its next destinations, where robotaxi testing is expected to begin soon. It is also already running retrofitted test vehicles in Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Seattle.“We think it’s very, very early days, and the future is not written yet,” Levinson told CNBC during a demo ride.Zoox’s 190,000-square-foot Las Vegas depot will host its robotaxi fleet, available for pickup at major spots like Top Golf, Area15, and several casinos. Each vehicle carries four passengers in face-to-face seating, runs 16 hours per charge, and features bidirectional wheels plus large windows for both sightseeing and easy conversation.“It’s not a retrofitted car. It’s built from the ground up around the rider,” Zoox CEO Aicha Evans noted.Along with introducing a distinct vehicle, Zoox is pursuing a different path to market compared to Waymo, which has partnered with automakers like Chrysler, Jaguar, and Hyundai.