EVwire brief: Zoox, Amazon's robotaxi arm, gave its purpose-built driverless vehicle a working-over, reworking the cabin and exterior around feedback from half a million riders as it lines up a commercial launch it is aiming for later this year.
The core is untouched. The cube-shaped pod still has no steering wheel or pedals, drives in both directions, steers on all four wheels, and seats four in its signature carriage-style, face-to-face layout, topping out at 75 mph (121 km/h) with its moonroof, starry-night lights, and 40-strong suite of cameras, radar, lidar, and infrared sensors all carried over.
The interior has been switched to a lighter aloe-green and stone-grey palette.
Inside, Zoox padded out the seats and headrests, switched to a lighter aloe-green and stone-grey palette, and fussed over the small stuff: fluting on the charging pad so phones stop sliding around, roomier cupholders, and an easier-to-read touchscreen.
“The updates we've made to this iteration of our purpose-built robotaxi continue to further distinguish the Zoox experience from anything else available today.”
Zoox says the lighter cabin reads as calmer, and the higher-contrast surfaces make a dropped phone or bag easier to pick out, while the new materials hold up better to everyday city wear.
The outside got functional tweaks too. Zoox refined and relocated its bidirectional reflectors, the color-shifting markers that signal which end of the pod is the front, and reworked the door interface with a new speaker and microphone, giving it two-way audio to communicate with riders, with people out on the street, and between Zoox Support and first responders.
No wheel, no pedals, and now a calmer cabin built for high-mileage ride-hailing.
Context:
There is a manufacturing reason for the update. Zoox calls this version its production-intent vehicle, the one it will build at scale at its Hayward, California factory. That facility opened last year, and it has room to eventually turn out 10,000 robotaxis a year.
One large obstacle still sits between Zoox and paying customers. Because the pod skips the controls that federal rules still require, Zoox has asked NHTSA for a commercial exemption, and a decision is pending now that the public comment window has closed.
The agency already cleared Zoox in August 2025 to run its custom robotaxis on public roads, and approval this time would switch on commercial robotaxi rides. For now, Zoox is testing and offering no-charge trips in Austin, San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Miami.
Source: Zoox, TechCrunch
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