Amazon introduced a new toaster shaped auto transmission, driverless taxi on the roads of California named as Zoox. “First time in history a purpose-built robotaxi — without any manual controls — drove autonomously with passengers,” the company declared in honour of the achievement.
Zoox is one of the several companies who are testing AVs on open highways, in the golden state. And even while it lags behind rivals like Waymo and Cruise in the battle to market the technology, it is making strides by introducing a novel type of vehicle on the road — one that lacks conventional controls and is hardly a “car” in the contemporary sense of the word.
A change to Zoox’s current testing permit was issued by the California Department of Motor Vehicles last week, enabling the business to test its robotaxi in a “restricted region” in Foster City, California, where its headquarter is located.
However, Zoox’s specially constructed robotaxi rarely has any freedom of movement. The vehicle can only be used on Saturdays and Sundays during daylight hours, is restricted to a top speed of 40 mph, and is not permitted to be driven in bad weather condition.
Even though, Zoox is in a jubilant mood, which is understandable given the recent depressing news regarding autonomous vehicles. In a Reddit post, Zoox’s founder and CTO, Jesse Levinson, gave additional information.
Levinson said that the Zoox car took its passengers on “dozens” of trips around a two-mile circle on public highways. He added, “Our car never got stuck, stopped, or had any problems at all while travelling.” We stumbled through a lot of cars, motorcycles, walkers, and other vehicles, as one could anticipate on wide public roadways. There were a lot of traffic signals along the road, left and right turns, unsafe cross traffic, and top speeds of 35 mph.
