Zoox, Amazon’s autonomous vehicle business unit, this week unveiled a fully autonomous electric vehicle with no steering wheel that it claims can carry passengers for many hours on a single charge.
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Of course, to launch a ride service, Zoox will have to receive many regulatory approvals – very far from a certainty at this point. |
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Zoox calls the new vehicle either a driverless carriage or robotaxi. The vehicles have a motor at each end, and thus can travel in either direction. The electric vehicle is capable of reaching speeds of 75 mph.
The first product can carry as many as four passengers. Two battery packs, one under each row of seats, allow 16 hours of drive time before a re-charging is needed, Zoox claims.
The focused application is for an autonomous ride sharing service. To that end, Zoox plans to launch an app-based service in several cities, citing San Francisco and Las Vegas in the US, with plans for services in markets outside the US as well, the company said.
New Amazon/Zoox Robotaxi
However, no timing on launch of the service was provided by Zoox, though it did confirm it would not happen in 2021. The company did say fares would be '"affordable" and similar to costs to use driver-based ride services such as Lyft and Uber.
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Amazon announced it was acquiring Zoox in June, in a deal reported be worth $1.3 billion. Though still very much in start-up mode, it had received large amounts of funding, and was said at the time of the acquisition to have had about 1000 employees.
Of course, to launch a ride service, Zoox will have to receive many regulatory approvals – very far from a certainty at this point.
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