Zoox will open its aloe-green robotaxis to select San Franciscans Tuesday. The Amazon-owned company is inviting people from its waitlist to take free rides and share their feedback before it expands its service. Zoox did not provide a timeline for citywide expansion.
The zone of operation includes parts of SoMa, the Mission, and the Design District, where Zoox has been autonomously testing its driverless vehicles, which also lack steering wheels, for a year.
Zoox plans to partner with local businesses to offer rides to employees. A partnership with Tartine Manufactory will deliver workers to the bakery’s Mission plant, which is far from Muni and BART lines.
“We have seen incredible interest in Zoox in this market and are excited about this first step to bring our purpose-built robotaxi experience to more people,” said CEO Aicha Evans.
The robotaxi wars are heating up in San Francisco. Alphabet-owned Waymo last week began operating on Bay Area freeways and now has a unified service area of more than 260 square miles. Tesla’s semi-autonomous robotaxi service, which still uses a safety driver in the front seat and has a waitlist, operates on Bay Area bridges and runs from Marin to San José, and Uber is set to launch a robotaxi in San Francisco next year.
Zoox, based in Foster City, has tested its technology with safety drivers in San Francisco since 2017. Last month, the company began letting employees’ friends and family test the service. Zoox went live in Las Vegas in September, offering free rides to select destinations around the Strip.
Riders can sign up for the waitlist on the Zoox app. Zoox said people will be let off the waitlist based on their location and the addition of robotaxis to its fleet.
The Zoox vehicle, which looks like a futuristic horseless carriage, boasts wireless phone chargers, personal screens for each passenger to adjust the temperature in their quadrant, and twinkly overhead lights that turn on at night.
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However, riders have noted that the backward-facing seats can lead to motion sickness; the Zoox app instructs riders to choose forward-facing seats if that’s a concern. Two reporters from The Standard sat backward during a Zoox test ride this year and regretted the decision.