Not Robo-Taxis, Amazon Might Be Going After Robo-Deliveries With Zoox Acquisition

Amazon chief and currently the richest man in the world - Jeff Bezos was recently called a ¡°copycat¡± by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The poke on twitter was in response to the former¡¯s company¡¯s investment in one of the most advanced automated driving (AD) startups - Zoox.

With the tweet, Musk took a dig at Amazon¡¯s apparent ambition to come up with a robo-taxi service with the startup, a long standing goal of Zoox itself, as well as that of Tesla with its Autopilot. Musk, however, might have been fooled by a facade.

You see, it makes much more sense for Amazon to use robo-deliveries and not robo-taxis.

Amazon Scout - Amazon's existing effort at an autonomous delivery bot (Image: Amazon)

The world¡¯s biggest e-commerce firm has been struggling to keep up with the demand across the globe. More so since the COVID-19 pandemic rendered shopping in the brick and mortar stores impossible.

With logistics stretched out to the max, it only makes sense to automate the process through automated vehicles. Such vehicles will also adhere to the contact-less conduct desirable since the outbreak of the pandemic.

Redirecting efforts

Amazon is not the only one thinking of automated deliveries through self-driving vehicles. ¡°A number of AD programs have shifted pilot programs over to deliveries,¡± reports Forbes. While some of these are to support medical facilities, others are providing meals and groceries in areas in need.

Some are even delivering critical cargo such as Covid-19 test samples, thus also reducing the risk of contamination to others.

Amazon can find a similar use case scenario for its own fleet of automated vehicles, as and when it rolls out. Automated vehicles developed by Zoox can easily be tweaked to carry Amazon goods on a set route to preset locations in an urban area. Once there, the customers can simply enter an unlock code and take their order.

(Representative Image: Reuters)

A big advantage over robo-taxis is that such a vehicle would operate without any passengers. This means that the company will be looking at small delivery bots that would operate at low speeds in a set region. Even the safety regulations will be much easily met for such a vehicle than a fully automated taxi carrying passengers.

As and when Amazon plans to ramp it up for bigger vehicles, it can easily collaborate its investment in Rivian - a renowned EV maker - for an automated ride hailing service. And make no mistake, that was the official reason for the Zoox acquisition. So a robo-taxi service by Amazon is something that we will see eventually.