Amazon's Zoox opens its first major robotaxi production facility | TechCrunch
Amazon-owned autonomous vehicle company Zoox has opened its first full-fledged production facility, where it expects to one day build 10,000 robotaxis per year.
The facility marks the latest step in Zoox’s evolution out of the development phase. The company is currently testing vehicles in multiple U.S. cities and offering rides to early-access participants in Las Vegas. That early-rider program will expand to San Francisco later this year, and Zoox plans to launch paid public rides in Las Vegas this year, too.
The 220,000-square-foot factory is located in Hayward, California, near Zoox’s Foster City headquarters. This is the company’s second production facility in the Bay Area, adding to the assembly warehouse in nearby Fremont.
Zoox says the new factory will be used for engineering, software and hardware integration, assembly, storage, and testing. The Hayward production facility will assemble the custom-built Zoox robotaxis for multiple commercial markets, beginning with Las Vegas and then San Francisco. Zoox plans to roll out commercial robotaxi operations in Austin and Miami in the next few years.
The company says the facility’s “unique layout and building equipment” will be able to adapt to different vehicle designs as its robotaxi lineup expands in the future. The facility will be operated by a mix of human workers and robots. Human workers will handle the bulk of the work, according to Zoox, which said robots will be used for specific tasks, such as applying adhesive for glass installation and transporting the robotaxi down the assembly line.
Correction: This story previously mischaracterized the current status of Zoox’s early-rider program and commercial. It has been updated to reflect that the program is in effect in Las Vegas and that paid rides will start this year.
Sean O’Kane is a reporter who has spent a decade covering the rapidly-evolving business and technology of the transportation industry, including Tesla and the many startups chasing Elon Musk. Most recently, he was a reporter at Bloomberg News where he helped break stories about some of the most notorious EV SPAC flops. He previously worked at The Verge, where he also covered consumer technology, hosted many short- and long-form videos, performed product and editorial photography, and once nearly passed out in a Red Bull Air Race plane.
