Exciting news! Recently, Amazon-owned Zoox’s autonomous shuttle service hit the open public roads, marking the first time in history that a purpose-built robotaxi has driven autonomously with passengers, and without any manual controls like a steering wheel or pedals. The experience was built for riders, not drivers, and it was a huge moment for Zoox and its crew, who made this happen.

According to Jesse Levinson, co-founder and CTO of Zoox, being the world’s first passenger in a robotaxi with no manual controls on open public roads was one of the highlights of his life. Reinventing transportation required assessing all-new innovations at every stage. Zoox put its vehicle through iterative loops of simulations and structured testing in the test chamber to clock serious miles on private test tracks. Meanwhile, the L3 test fleet collected real road data and drove more than a million autonomous miles in San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Seattle.

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

Starting this spring, Zoox’s full-time employees will be able to ride in the robotaxi between its Foster City offices during business hours. This milestone is a significant achievement for Zoox, the autonomous vehicle industry, and transportation in cities. It’s a step closer to bringing purpose-built robotaxis to the general public, and it will revolutionize how people travel, making journeys easier and more enjoyable.

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Chinese tech giant Baidu could be regarded as the Google of China. Its search engine is the largest in China and the company is also spreading its tentacles into other tech sectors just like Google. Baidu last year commenced testing of its autonomous vehicles that would be deployed as Robotaxis in China’s Cangzhou.

News filtering in now is that the company is now set to take the project to the next level. Baidu has now reportedly secured approval to commence paid ride services for the autonomous vehicles in the same city of Cangzhou, China.  The city which is about 149 miles south of Beijing reportedly gave the nod for Baidu’s Apollo Go robotaxi service to run commercialization tests. The tests will be carried out with 35 cars that will have safety drivers behind the wheels but there is an additional 10 vehicles that are approved to be run fully driverless.

While Baidu isn’t the first company to trial Robotaxi services in China (AutoX is also doing the same), it boasts of being the first to start testing a paid commercial robotaxi service. Before now, the company had offered free rides on its robotaxi while it is test-running the service. In addition, this is the first time the city is granting permission to a company to test fully driverless vehicles on the city’s roads. Previous tests involved having safety drivers behind the wheels.

Baidu was required to complete 50,000 kilometers (31,068 miles) of testing on local roads for its robotaxi before the permit to monetize the services was granted. However, the company disclosed that its fleet in Cangzhou was able to accumulate a staggering ~326,030 miles as of the beginning of March.

Baidu is also testing its robotaxi in Bejing and Changsha, the capital of China’s Hunan province. The firm is eyeing further expansion to 30 more cities within the next three years. Outside China, Baidu is also testing driverless vehicles in California.

Recall that AutoX a couple of months back shared a video of its robotaxi in action in China.

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Only about six months back, Amazon announced the acquisition of self-driving startup Zoox, and today the company pulled the wraps off its first autonomous vehicle. Instead of following the pathway, several other tech firms such as AutoX have followed which is automating a standard car built with a human driver in mind, the Zoox robotaxi is built specifically for autonomous driving in dense urban environments.

The robotaxi is just 3.63 meters long which is quite compact. That is mostly because there is no luggage compartment or a front hood housing a sophisticated mechanical engine. Instead, Zoox robotaxi has a cabin-like design where four passengers sit facing each other in pairs.

The Zoox Fully Autonomous, All-electric Robotaxi adopts four-wheel steerings and bi-directional driving in that there is no front or rear side. The vehicle also doesn’t have a steering wheel.

Despite its compact size, Zoox’s robotaxi can reach speeds up to 75 MPH. It’s powered by two individual battery packs that provide about 16 hours of run time before they need to recharge, so a single robotaxi should be able to do a day’s worth of work before it needs a power-up.

The carriage also has some unique safety features to go along with its unconventional design, including an airbag system specially built for its bi-directional design. Zoox says that all four seats get the equivalent of five-star crash safety protection. Meanwhile, the camera, LIDAR, and radar system provide a 270-degree field of view from all four corners of the robotaxi, which basically eliminates blind spots.

The tech start-up disclosed that the robotaxis are already being tested in Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Foster City, CA. We can’t say for now if riders can hail a ride on the robotaxi.

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