Amazon to ramp up its Zoox robotaxi factory as it prepares to challenge Google’s Waymo

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) announced on Wednesday that it is getting ready up to make as many as 10,000 robotaxis annually at its plant near Silicon Valley as it prepares to compete with self-driving cab leader Waymo (GOOG) and Tesla (TSLA).

In a bid to enter the robotaxi race, the e-commerce giant acquired self-driving startup Zoox, which is expected to start transporting customers in Las Vegas late this year and expand into San Francisco next year, in $1.2 billion five years ago.

The self-driving startup aims to compete with Google’s Waymo, which started its robotaxi operations in Phoenix five years ago and expanded its operation to San Francisco, Los Angles and Austin, Texas.

Waymo says it has already over 10 million paid rides, as Amazon’s Zoox and Tesla are fine-tuning their self-driving technology and trying to ramp up their fleets.

Amazon believes that it has addressed that issue with Zoox’s manufacturing plant that spans across the equivalent of three-and-a-half football fields, located in Hayward, California.

Zoox is expected to make 10,000 robotaxis annually by 2027 in Hayward for a fleet, which will be help the company expand in other major markets like Miami, Los Angeles and Atlanta.

For now, the self-driving startup is only making one robotaxi per day, but by next year hopes to be churning them out at the rate of three vehicles per hour.

Zoox is still testing its robotaxis in San Francisco. While testing in San Francisco last month, a minor accident between a person riding an electric scooter and Zoox’s robotaxi forced the company to issue a voluntary call to update its technology. On the other hand, Waymo has turned autonomous cars into an everyday site in San Francisco.

“Zoox is planning to operate 500 to 1,000 of its robotaxis in small to medium-sized markets and about 2,000 robotaxis in major cities where it eventually operates,” said Zoox CEO Aicha Evans, adding that, “The company thinks each robotaxi produced in its Hayward plan should be on the road for about five years, or about 500,000 miles.”

Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk is also vying to join the robotaxi race and eventually compete against Waymo. However, it’s unclear when Musk will fulfil his promise to build the world’s largest robotaxi service.

Musk is aiming for a limited rollout of Tesla’s robotaxis in Austin, Texas, this Sunday.

However, Tesla’s robotaxis face several hurdles as the Office of Defects Investigation of the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has sent a series of questions to Tesla regarding its Full Self-Driving (FSD) software, which isn’t a fully autonomous driving setup as the name suggests, but a driver assistance system.

The autonomous taxi race is heating up in the US as Waymo, Zoox and Tesla focus on expanding its fleet across cities. Baidu (BIDU), WeRide (WRD), and Pony AI (PONY) are other competitors on the global stage.