Great news: you can now ride a Zoox robotaxi if you’re in San Francisco. Yes, you heard me right! Zoox, I said.
I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that in 2020, Amazon bought an Australia-founded robotaxi company called Zoox for $1.2 billion, and that not long after that acquisition, it rolled out a prototype that looks like a Pokémon on wheels.
On Tuesday, Zoox debuted a program called “Zoox Explorers” that invites users in San Francisco to download the Zoox app, and get on the waitlist to potentially take a free ride in one of these—I guess you could call it a “buggy,” since Zoox doesn’t want us to call it a car. Using the app could already get you a free ride starting in September, but only if you were going up or down the Las Vegas Strip.
The Zoox vehicle has a plausible reason for looking so cutesy. It’s a purpose-built robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals. It resembles nothing so much as certain ferris wheel gondolas—an interior that only has room for two bench seats at opposite ends, where passengers face one another instead of all looking forward.
San Francisco’s Mission, SoMa, and Design District neighborhoods will be covered by the Zoox Explorers program—areas where a Zoox could plausibly encounter a competing Waymo, and there’s simply no telling what would happen then.
Once you’re on the waiting list, according to Zoox, the company will “notify you when you can join the preview and request a ride.” Also, according to the Zoox site, the rider “can’t take over the driving,” but is provided controls for the temperature and music. You can also “initiate an emergency stop if you must exit the robotaxi.” I can only assume this last feature is known as the “puke button” around the Zoox office.
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