After successfully launching autonomous driving services in Las Vegas and San Francisco late last year, Amazon’s Zoox has seen significant results with more than a million autonomous miles traveled (about 1.6 million kilometers) and 300,000 passengers in their robot taxis. Riding the wave of that success, the nursery is now targeting its expansion to the southern US, opening operations in Phoenix, Arizona, and expanding testing in Dallas, Texas.
This strategic move also includes significant infrastructure investments. In addition to opening new locations in both cities, Zoox is also establishing a new “Fusion Center” in Scottsdale, which will serve as a control point for operations in the area. These developments are expected to result in the creation of hundreds of new jobs, while the fleet of test vehicles will now cover a total of ten different US metropolitan areas: the San Francisco Bay Area, Las Vegas, Seattle, Austin, Miami, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Washington and the newest arrivals Phoenix and Dallas.
The latter cities, they say, were chosen among others due to rapid growth and high demand for transportation services, but the key reason lies in the diversity of terrain and climate. Unlike dense urban environments like San Francisco, they offer environments that allow for the collection of specific data. Phoenix thus provides an opportunity to test sensors and batteries in extreme heat and dust, while Dallas offers a complex road network and varied weather conditions to further improve the artificial intelligence responsible for autonomous driving.
The implementation process will begin according to standard protocol, with a small fleet of specially adapted SUVs. The first phase is focused on manual terrain mapping, followed by a transition to autonomous testing. During the entire process, there will be safety drivers in the vehicles ready to take control at any time and turn off the artificial intelligence system if the situation requires it. After that phase of testing with modified SUVs is completed, Zoox plans to introduce its purpose-built robotaxis to these markets.