Electric autonomous ‘robotaxis’ coming to San Diego

Imagine Uber or Lyft without the driver. 

You’ll get an electric robotaxi, a new ride-hailing vehicle by Zoox Inc., an autonomous mobility company that is opening a San Diego office this summer and says it will bring more than 100 new jobs to the region.

“San Diego offers an array of technical talent that will help us reach our mission and bring our autonomous robotaxi to public roads,” said Ravi Gopalan, Zoox senior director of firmware, systems integration and QA. “Zoox will be one of the first autonomous robotaxi companies in San Diego, and we will be able to offer talent in San Diego the opportunity to help solve one of the most technically-advanced challenges of our generation.”   

Zoox was acquired by Amazon in 2020, becoming an independent subsidiary. It’s association with the giant company is sure to bolster its status in the ride-hailing industry.

Jesse Levinson co-founded Zoox in 2014 and is the company’s chief technical officer.

He graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University and completed his Computer Science Ph.D. and Postdoc under Sebastian Thrun at Stanford University, where he developed algorithms for the $1 million-winning entry in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge and went on to lead the self-driving car team for five years. 

Aicha Evans joined the company in February 2019 and is the chief executive officer. She came from Intel Corporation, where she was senior vice president and chief strategy officer. Evans ran Intel’s wireless efforts and oversaw a global team of 7,000 engineers.

The company says its electric autonomous vehicle is designed for dense, urban environments, the first in the industry to showcase a driving, purpose-built robotaxi capable of operating up to 75 miles per hour.

Designed and manufactured in the U.S., Zoox is the only vehicle to offer bidirectional driving capabilities and four-wheel steering, which enables maneuvering through compact spaces and changing directions without the need to reverse. 

At 11.8 feet long, the vehicle has one of the smallest footprints in the automotive industry. It features a four-seat, face-to-face symmetrical seating configuration that eliminates the steering wheel and bench seating seen in conventional car designs. The vehicle also features a 133 kWh battery, one of the largest available in electric vehicles today, allowing it to operate for up to 16 continuous hours on a single charge. 

“Revealing our functioning and driving vehicle is an exciting milestone in our company’s history and marks an important step on our journey towards deploying an autonomous ride-hailing service,” said Evans. “We are transforming the rider experience to provide superior mobility-as-a-service for cities. And as we see the alarming statistics around carbon emissions and traffic accidents, it’s more important than ever that we build a sustainable, safe solution that allows riders to get from point A to point B.” 

A company report says the vehicle design has more than 100 safety innovations not featured in conventional cars, including a novel airbag system for bidirectional vehicles and carriage seating that envelops passengers, which is equal to five-star crash safety protections for all four seats. 

“The vehicles utilize a unique sensor architecture of cameras, radar, and LIDAR to obtain an unrivaled 270-degree field of view on all four corners of the vehicle, eliminating typical blind spots and allowing the vehicle to consistently track objects next to and behind it, including pedestrians, bicyclists, and other road users,” the report states.

“Safety is the foundation of everything we do. Building a vehicle from the ground-up has given us the opportunity to reimagine passenger safety, shifting from reactive to proactive measures,” said Levinson. “These include new safety features such as our airbag design, redundant hardware throughout the vehicle, a unique sensor architecture, and a custom AI stack that detects and mitigates potential risks. Our vehicle has passed key crash tests, and we are continuing to look for new, innovative ways to protect our riders and others on the road.” 

Photos courtesy of Zook Inc.