Amazon-owned Zoox has cleared the last federal obstacle standing between its purpose-built robotaxi and paying passengers.
According to TechCrunch, federal safety regulators granted the autonomous vehicle company a temporary exemption that allows it to charge customers for rides in its custom-built vehicle. CNBC reports that Zoox will begin charging for rides in Las Vegas after clearing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration hurdle.
What makes the decision unusual is the vehicle itself. Zoox's robotaxi is a boxy, toaster-shaped pod with no steering wheel — a design that does not fit the federal motor vehicle safety standards written around cars driven by humans. As Reuters' Abhirup Roy reports, this is the NHTSA's first US approval for paid deployment of a steering-wheel-free robotaxi.
The permission comes with limits. The Verge reports that the temporary exemption allows Zoox to deploy up to 2,500 vehicles annually over the next two years; Reuters frames the same cap as running through 2028. CNBC notes the exemption is subject to "enhanced, adaptable" oversight conditions, and describes the deployment as limited and commercial rather than open-ended.
The distinction matters because most robotaxi services on US roads today — including Zoox's own earlier free rides — run in vehicles that started life as ordinary cars, with steering wheels still bolted in. Building a vehicle with no manual controls at all means there is no fallback driver by design, which is exactly why it required a federal exemption.
This is the first time a US regulator has let a company sell rides in a car that was never designed for a human to drive.