By MICHAEL LIEDTKE
Amazon’s Zoox on Wednesday launched its robotaxi service in Las Vegas, offering free rides through parts of the entertainment mecca for anyone willing to step into a driverless vehicle.
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The Las Vegas debut of Zoox’s long-planned ride-hailing service reflects Amazon-owned robotaxi maker’s confidence in the safety of its vehicles after two years of testing them in the city.
The boxy, four-passenger robotaxis are built in a former bus factory in Hayward, and they have been undergoing testing on San Francisco’s streets for almost a year.
The Las Vegas vehicles initially were only available to employees before gradually expanding to friends and family members. Now, anyone with the Zoox app will be able to request a ride to five designated locations, including Resorts World, the Luxor hotel and the New York-New York hotel. The longest distance the Zoox robotaxis will travel is about 3 miles.
All rides will be provided for free for at least the first few months to help promote the service in the perennially popular travel destination. Once it begins charging for rides in Las Vegas, Zoox says its prices will be comparable to traditional taxis and ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft.
Zoox can afford to give free rides largely because of Amazon’s deep pockets. The e-commerce powerhouse, currently worth $2.5 trillion, bought Zoox for $1.2 billion five years ago as part of its efforts to establish a foothold in other fields of technology.
The Las Vegas market marks Zoox’s first step in its attempt to catch up with robotaxi leader Waymo, a Google spin-off that offers that already provides driverless rides in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Atlanta and Austin, Texas (where Tesla is still in the testing phase of a robotaxi service that its CEO, Elon Musk, has been hyping for the past decade).
In a sign of its ambitions, Zoox hopes to manufacture as many as 10,000 robotaxis annually as it expands into other markets.
Zoox is currently operating about 50 vehicles in Las Vegas and San Francisco. After it starts charging for rides in San Francisco, Zoox hopes to expand to Austin and Miami next.