The 220,000-square-foot (20,440-square-meters) robotaxi factory announced Wednesday heralds a new phase in Amazon’s push into a technological frontier that began taking shape in 2009, when Waymo was launched as a secret project within Google.
Amazon began eyeing the market five years ago when it shelled out $1.2 billion for self-driving startup Zoox, which will be the brand behind a robotaxi service that plans to begin transporting customers in Las Vegas late this year before expanding into San Francisco next year.
Zoox, conceived in 2014, will be trying to catch up to Waymo, which began operating robotaxis in Phoenix nearly five years ago then charging for rides in San Francisco in 2023 before expanding into Los Angeles and Austin, Texas. Waymo says it has already more than 10 million paid rides while other would-be rivals such as Amazon and Tesla are still fine-tuning their self-driving technology while tackling other challenges, such how to ramp up their fleet.
Amazon feels like 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—about 17 miles (27 kilometers) north of a factory where Tesla makes some of the electric vehicles that Musk believes will eventually be able to operate without a driver behind the wheel.
