Zoox brings its robotaxis to Austin and Miami | TechCrunch

Zoox is bringing its purpose-built robotaxis to Austin, Texas and Miami, Florida after almost two years of operating its test vehicles in the cities. The company said Tuesday it plans to start offering rides in both locations later this year as part of its early-rider program.

Zoox also announced that it is expanding its service areas in San Francisco and Las Vegas. The San Francisco service area is quadrupling in size with a focus on “the eastern half of the city” for people in Zoox’s early-rider program.

In Las Vegas, where free rides are available to anyone with the Zoox app, the company says it is doubling the number of destinations to include The Sphere, T-Mobile Arena, and the Las Vegas Convention Center. Zoox already drops and picks up riders at a number of hotels and attractions, including Area15, Top Golf, Fashion Show Las Vegas, Luxor, Resorts World, and the Wynn. Zoox will start testing its robotaxi at the Las Vegas airport in preparation for future service, too, the company said Tuesday.

For now, Zoox can only offer free rides to customers because of federal restrictions it is working to remove. And it has made some progress on that front.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began taking public comments this month on Zoox’s application to be granted exemptions from certain Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. Zoox needs those exemptions to launch commercial services with paid rides.

The company has sounded optimistic that it will get them, and earlier this month announced a partnership with Uber that would make Zoox’s robotaxis available on the ride-hail giant’s network in Las Vegas later this year.

Zoox said Tuesday that its robotaxis have driven “nearly two million autonomous miles” and carried “over 350,000 riders” to date. It also said it has been collecting feedback from many of those riders, which is leading to new features like Bluetooth audio connectivity in the robotaxis (which it is calling “ZooxCast”) and a “Find My Zoox” feature that will help riders find the robotaxi they’ve hailed in busy locations.

The Amazon-owned autonomous vehicle company is not expanding as quickly as Alphabet-owned Waymo, which plans to launch commercial services in 20 new cities globally this year. Still, Zoox is having a busy year. It recently started mapping the streets of Dallas and Phoenix ahead of testing in those cities. It’s already testing in Washington, D.C., Seattle, Los Angeles, and Atlanta.