Amazon's Zoox received federal approval on July 30 to begin charging customers for rides in fully autonomous vehicles that have no steering wheel, pending state and local sign-off1,2. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration cleared the specially designed cars, which feature four inward-facing seats, marking the first time the agency has authorized a commercial robotaxi service in vehicles built without manual driving controls4.
Zoox will initially be allowed to deploy up to 2,500 vehicles without steering wheels over the next two years. The company has already been offering free rides in Las Vegas and San Francisco since last year and said more than half a million people have ridden in its vehicles. Amazon paid $1.2 billion to acquire Zoox and hopes to eventually produce as many as 10,000 robotaxis a year at a plant near Silicon Valley.
Zoox CEO Aicha Evans said the approval is an important milestone for autonomous vehicles.
NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison said the agency wants to update regulations to fit fully autonomous vehicles while acting as the "cop on the beat" to ensure the process is done right. Morrison said steering wheels, windshield wipers, and side-view mirrors are not really needed in an autonomous vehicle. Most vehicle safety regulations were written decades ago with the assumption that a human driver would be behind the wheel.
Separately, NHTSA proposed a rule last month to allow robotaxis to operate without brake pedals, though that proposal is still pending.
The approval drew criticism from safety advocates. Peter Kurdock, general counsel for the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, said Zoox did not provide detailed evidence showing its vehicles could operate safely on public roads. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said the limited crash data the government requires autonomous vehicle companies to submit makes it hard to assess robotaxi safety. Most companies do not report how many miles their autonomous vehicles drove, making it impossible to calculate a crash rate, according to the IIHS.
NHTSA has responded to incidents involving autonomous cars passing school buses or interfering with first responders through investigations, recalls, and calls to action. Autonomous vehicle companies report many more minor incidents than human drivers, who tend to report crashes only when there is significant damage or injuries.
Zoox and Tesla are working to catch up to Waymo, which is owned by Alphabet and already operates in multiple cities.
ANALYSIS The NHTSA decision removes a key regulatory barrier for purpose-built autonomous vehicles — those designed from the ground up without human controls — as distinct from retrofitted conventional cars. The 2,500-vehicle cap and the requirement for additional state and local approvals constrain near-term scale, but the federal precedent opens a pathway that competitors could seek to follow.