May 29, 2026 - Zoox Getting Better

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for May 29, 2026, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry. 

I'm in Las Vegas this week for a couple of days this week and took the opportunity to go for another ride in a Zoox robotaxi. Las Vegas is the first market where Amazon-owned Zoox opened its service to the general public, and at this stage, rides are still being offered for free. Zoox is also the first robotaxi operator in North America to launch a purpose-built vehicle. The Zoox robotaxi is a four-passenger electric vehicle with sliding doors and carriage seating. That makes entry and exit very easy and provides a surprising amount of room for four adults despite the vehicle's small footprint. Another unique aspect of the vehicle is that it has no front or rear; it's fully symmetric and reversible. Based on the direction of travel, the lights switch between white for headlights and red for taillights. 

When I used the service in January during CES, the overall ride quality was very good, but there were some issues. Zoox launched the service with about 40 vehicles in Las Vegas and has had to get permission from individual hotels to operate on their property. In January, there were only seven locations available to ride to. That number has now more than doubled and stretches from the Fontainebleau at the north end of the strip to Mandalay Bay at the south end. The small number of vehicles meant long waits of up to an hour. The vehicles also had only small ID numbers on the corners that made it challenging to identify which vehicle was for which rider. 

Zoox has now added LED light strips in the windows that are color-keyed to the app so riders can quickly identify their ride. They've now added a feature to the app that stops taking ride requests when there is too much of a backlog in order to avoid excessive waits. The robotaxi always had the ability to play music that the riders could select from the touchscreens at each seat. The app now has a ZooxCast feature that lets riders connect their phones via Bluetooth and stream their own media.  Another noticeable change was a general improvement in control refinement at low speed, where the braking was sometimes a bit rough during earlier rides. 

Zoox has been listening to the complaints and making improvements, and the vehicle seems to work well in heavy Las Vegas traffic, although the road network is not that complex here. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to try the service in a tougher environment like San Francisco soon. 

Thanks for listening.