A number of news outlets are reporting that Amazon is apparently going to acquire the self driving technology start up Zoox, for $1.2bn.
There is speculation that the aim is to create a ride share company to rival companies such as Uber & Waymo. Waymo is currently the only company operating a “real” driverless service, based in suburban Phoenix.
Zoox has focused on a bi directional driverless car, with no steering wheel and no obvious front or back. That feature is seen as useful for city driving, with an obvious application as a delivery vehicle. This application would match better with Amazon’s current online retail activities than a big push into ride share..
Interestingly, there is a suggestion that the reason for Amazon acquiring the technology could be for home delivery. This would make sense to us.
Back in 2019 Amazon announced they were taking a stake in the EV manufacturer Rivian and then in Sept they announced they were going to purchase 100,000 EV delivery vans. More recently they released photos of the new vans … in Amazon Prime livery Taking a closer look at the new Amazon EV's
They expect to start deliveries with the new vehicles in 2021 and to have as many as 10,000 vans on the road by 2022
It doesn’t take much imagination to put the EV vans together with driverless technology to see how home deliveries might look toward the end of this decade.
A note of caution … the Zoox vehicle was supposed to be up & running in 2020, but its been delayed. This seems to be a trend in the industry. Level 5 vehicles has been just a few years away (according to some commentators) for some time. But the reality is we don’t even have a Level 3 car in production. And some analysts think we may never reach Level 5 Self driving car - reality check (Wired)
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