Made for riders. Now on public roads.

A historic first

Over the weekend, we hit the road! Our robotaxi’s first voyage on open public roads. Our employees’ first taste of their new autonomous shuttle service, with dozens of team members enjoying the experience. The first time in history a purpose-built robotaxi—without any manual controls—drove autonomously with passengers. No steering wheel. No pedals. An experience built for riders, not drivers. 

This is a huge moment for Zoox—and the crew who’ve built it.

Tried and trusted

Starting from scratch gave us a long to-do list. Doing something completely new meant more testing, more complexity, and more time. But through dirt, dust, and thousands of rigorous testing scenarios, we’ve proven our technology is ready for reality.

Reinventing transportation meant assessing all-new innovations at every stage. This started in our lab and at our desks, with every circuit and every line of code going under the microscope, day after day.

Next, we put our vehicle through iterative loops of simulations and structured testing. In the test chamber, this meant heat and rain so we could check the hardware and anything that could compromise rider comfort. Outdoors, we clocked some serious miles on our private test tracks. This bigger arena allowed us to pick up speed and give ourselves room to recreate city-like scenarios in a controlled environment. Meanwhile, our L3 test fleet collected real road data and drove more than a million autonomous miles in San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Seattle.

Test, adjust, affirm, repeat. Then—and only then—was it finally time to hit the open roads with our one-of-a-kind robotaxi. 

Getting the green light

In July, 2022, Zoox became the first company to self-certify a purpose-built, fully autonomous, all-electric passenger vehicle to the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS). The FMVSS are the federal vehicle safety performance requirements needed to operate on public roads. And last week, Zoox received its driverless testing permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to operate our robotaxi autonomously on public roads, both empty and with Zoox employees as passengers.

King of commutes

Work perks don’t come more boundary-breaking than this. Starting this spring, full-time employees will be able to ride in the robotaxi between our Foster City offices during business hours. They’ll get to see the results of all of their hard work by taking autonomous trips and experiencing the vehicle seamlessly navigating the roads before anyone else.

The road ahead

This is a huge milestone for Zoox and the AV industry. And it’s a big one for transportation in cities, too. We’re one step closer to bringing our purpose-built robotaxi to the general public. A world of journeys to be enjoyed, not endured, has never felt closer.