Amazon-owned Zoox is gearing up to deploy its driverless vehicles in San Francisco, which will operate without a steering wheel or pedals.
There’s just one problem: Current federal standards require cars to have a steering wheel, along with other human controls like pedals and side-view mirrors. If manufacturers want to distribute cars that don’t comply with those standards, they’re supposed to get an exemption from federal regulators.
Zoox has not received such an exemption for its taxis, a spokesperson for the National Highway Safety Administration, who responded to an email from the agency’s press line and declined to give her name, confirmed to Gazetteer SF. While automakers are allowed to self-certify that they’re up to code, the cars are still subject to oversight. The spokesperson said the agency has an open investigation into whether Zoox’s custom-built vehicle meets federal standards.
In an on-stage interview at TechCrunch Disrupt on Wednesday, Zoox co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson said that the company is in compliance with federal safety regulations, and that Zoox has been “very, very transparent with [federal regulators] that we want to use the regulatory framework they laid out to certify that our vehicle is compliant with the federal motor vehicle safety standards.” He went on to say that Zoox is the “only company in the world that has built a robotaxi” that is compliant with those standards.
Zoox isn’t the only self-driving car company navigating this regulatory framework. General Motors’ Cruise sought an exemption in 2022 from the safety agency for its Origin vehicle, which has no steering wheel. Last September, the company said it was days away from getting approval, which never happened. This past July, Cruise pumped the brakes on the vehicle, citing “the regulatory risk,” GM CEO Mary Barra said at the time.
Autonomous delivery startup Nuro received a steering wheel and pedal exemption in 2020, but a key difference is the company’s vehicles are low-speed and don’t carry any humans. Last year, the federal agency said it was working on a new rule to accommodate autonomous vehicles without human controls, but that has yet to happen.
Zoox does have approval from the California Public Utilities Commission to launch a driverless pilot program, and its required permit from the Department of Motor Vehicles to test driverless vehicles on state roads.
When Zoox launches its custom-built taxi in San Francisco in the next couple of weeks, it will only be available for Zoox employees. While Zoox has permission to operate throughout the whole city, it’s initially going to stick to SoMa and then expand from there, Levinson said at Disrupt.
By next year, Levinson said Zoox plans to open up its custom-built cars to “Zoox Explorers,” a group of early adopters who will get to ride for free, similar to what Waymo did with its “Trusted Tester” program before launching its paid robotaxi.
Before Zoox can do that, the company will need to obtain approval from state regulators to operate a taxi service. In the meantime, we’ll be watching to see how regulators respond to Zoox’s deployments — and whether they determine the company’s cars to be in compliance with federal standards.
