Amazon's Zoox Aims to Challenge Waymo, Outpace Tesla in Robotaxi Race

HAYWARD, Calif. — Amazon.com Inc. is gearing up to make as many as 10,000 robotaxis annually at a sprawling plant near Silicon Valley as it prepares to challenge self-driving cab leader Waymo.

In Texas, Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk also is vying to join the autonomous race.

Amazon’s 220,000-square-foot robotaxi factory announced Wednesday heralds a new phase in the retailer’s push into a technological frontier that began taking shape in 2009, when Waymo was launched as a secret project within Google.

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Amazon began eyeing the market five years ago when it shelled out $1.2 billion for self-driving startup Zoox, which will be the brand behind a robotaxi service that plans to begin transporting customers in Las Vegas late this year before expanding into San Francisco in 2026.

Zoox, conceived in 2014, will be trying to catch up to Waymo, which began operating robotaxis in Phoenix nearly five years ago, then charging for rides in San Francisco in 2023 before expanding into Los Angeles and Austin. Waymo says it already has provided more than 10 million paid rides while other would-be rivals such as Amazon and Tesla are still fine-tuning their self-driving technology and tackling other challenges, such as how to ramp up their fleets.

Building fleets

Amazon says it has addressed that issue with Zoox’s manufacturing plant, which spans the equivalent of 3½ football fields and is located in Hayward — about 17 miles north of a factory where Tesla makes some of the electric vehicles Musk has long said eventually will be able to operate without a driver behind the wheel.

Since moving into the former bus manufacturing factory in 2023, Zoox has transformed it into a high-tech facility where its boxy, gondola-like vehicles are put together and tested along a 21-station assembly line. For now, Zoox is only making one robotaxi per day. By next year, it hopes to be churning them out at the rate of three per hour.

By 2027, Zoox hopes to be making 10,000 robotaxis annually in Hayward for a fleet it hopes to take into other major markets, including Miami, Los Angeles and Atlanta. Although Zoox will be assembling its robotaxis in the U.S., about half of the parts are imported from outside the country, according to company officials.

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Waymo also is planning to expand into Atlanta and Miami and on Wednesday took the first step toward bringing its robotaxis in the most populous U.S. city with the disclosure of an application to begin testing its vehicles in New York.

“It’s an exciting time to be heading on this journey,” Zoox CEO Aicha Evans said Tuesday during a tour of the robotaxi factory that she co-hosted with Jesse Levinson, the company’s co-founder and chief technology officer.

Although Zoox will be lagging well behind, it believes it can lure passengers with vehicles that look more like carriages than cars and have seating for up to four passengers. Waymo, in contrast, adds its self-driving technology to cars made by other major automakers, making its robotaxi look similar to vehicles steered by humans. Zoox isn’t even bothering to put a steering wheel in its robotaxis.

Where’s Tesla?

As it continues to test its robotaxis in Las Vegas, Zoox recently struck a partnership to give rides to guests of Resorts World. It’s also still testing its robotaxis in San Francisco, where Waymo already has turned driverless cars into an everyday sight in a city that has been renowned for cable cars since the 1870s.

While testing in San Francisco last month, a minor collision between a Zoox robotaxi and a person riding an electric scooter prompted the company to issue a voluntary recall to update its self-driving technology. No injuries were reported.

Tesla still is angling to compete against Waymo, too, although it remains unclear when Musk will fulfill his long-stated promise to build the world’s largest robotaxi service. The Texas billionaire still hasn’t given up on the goal, though his current ambitions are more modest than they were back in 2019, when he predicted Tesla would be running a fleet of 1 million robotaxis by now. He is currently aiming for a limited rollout of Tesla robotaxis in Austin this Sunday, although that date could change because Musk has said Tesla is “being super paranoid about safety.”

Zoox, in contrast, is planning to operate from 500 to 1,000 of its robotaxis in small- to medium-size markets and about 2,000 robotaxis in major cities where it eventually operates, according to Evans. The company thinks each robotaxi produced in its Hayward plan should be on the road for about five years, or about 500,000 miles.