Amazon's Zoox Gets Approval to Deploy 2,500 Driverless Vehicles

Amazon's Zoox subsidiary has gained federal approval to deploy up to 2,500 driverless vehicles annually in the US. This is a significant milestone for the company as it becomes the first purpose-built driverless vehicle with no manual controls to receive such approval.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) granted temporary permission for Zoox to commercially deploy its robotaxis, which will initially operate in Las Vegas before expanding to other markets. The agency stated that the systems on the Zoox vehicle 'exceed the equivalent performance requirements of a compliant vehicle.'

This development puts pressure on competitors like Tesla and Waymo, which are also racing to expand their autonomous ride-hailing services. While Waymo has already logged over 220 million fully autonomous miles, Tesla's robotaxi ambitions remain largely hype with little concrete progress.