Amazon has signed an agreement to acquire Zoox, a team developing ride-hailing services with autonomous driving technology.
Amazon said it will lead Zoox as a standalone business to drive the mission toward developing self-driving vehicles.
In the video, Zoox demonstrates a one-hour fully autonomous drive on a freeway in the Bay Area of California, with its technology reacting to traffic, changing lanes and high speeds. The technology senses incoming cars and the environment around it to best plan reactions in real time.
The acquisition by Amazon will help accelerate the path to delivering safe, environmentally friendly and autonomous transportation, Zoox said. The Zoox vehicle focuses on ride-hailing, something that has become widely popular in the realm of self-driving car development.
Intel recently acquired mobility-as-a-service platform provider Moovit to develop ride-hailing and car sharing. Intel already had Mobileye in its portfolio, which is developing robotaxi services. Waymo has been one of the pioneers in ride-hailing services, developing its self-driving technology of the past few years and most recently partnering with UPS to deliver packages autonomously. Bosch and Daimler launched a self-driving taxi service late last year with the idea to bring SAE Level 4 and Level 5 automated driving.
