Amazon’s Zoox Driverless Taxis Cleared By NHTSA For Public Demonstrations

• Federal regulators have issued an exemption to federal vehicle safety standards for Amazon’s Zoox robotaxi venture.
• Zoox can use its current fleet of driverless cars for demonstration purposes.
• The NHTSA also closed the probe it began in 2022 to look into how Zoox self-certified its robotaxis, claiming they meet all federal safety standards.

Zoox, Amazon’s driverless taxi venture, has been cleared by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to deploy its current fleet of steering wheel-less electric pods for demonstration purposes.

The federal agency issued an exemption to federal vehicle safety standards and closed a probe it opened in 2022 to look into whether the self-driving EVs, which lack pedals and a steering wheel, had met said safety requirements when the company self-certified the vehicle.

Zoox’s autonomous EV doesn’t have a steering wheel or pedals.

Photo by: Zoox

Zoox applied for the exemption in June, and now the NHTSA has granted it. In it, the federal regulator says Amazon’s robotaxi startup had self-certified its driverless cars in June 2022, but that “publicly available materials depicting Zoox’s vehicles suggested that they may not be compliant with certain FMVSS.” During the probe, an inspection report from the NHTSA included “multiple noncompliances with applicable FMVSS.”

In the official document, the federal agency said that Zoox was an outlier in the industry, having gone down the self-certification route rather than seeking an available exemption.

Now that the exemption is in place, the NHTSA has instructed Amazon’s robotaxi company to remove all existing statements that the purpose-built cabs comply with or conform to all applicable federal vehicle safety standards. Moreover, the exemption is only valid for all Zoox vehicles that were included in the NHTSA’s investigation, apart from certain 2023 model year cars, which have been retired. According to the document, a total of 64 vehicles that are now operating on public roads are covered by the exemption.

The exemption, however, does not allow Zoox to operate its robotaxis commercially. The company has been testing the four-wheeled pods near its headquarters in Foster City, California, as well as Las Vegas and San Francisco.

Earlier this year, Zoox opened its first dedicated robotaxi factory in Hayward, California, where it intends to build as many as 10,000 driverless cabs per year. However, any new car that rolls off the assembly line is not covered by this exemption, so Amazon’s subsidiary will have to come up with a new solution.

The NHTSA’s decision comes after it updated a policy to allow U.S.-made autonomous vehicles to qualify for exemptions. The agency said it would also update another exemption rule to speed up the review process and allow more domestic autonomous vehicle companies to deploy their cars on the road.