AI may not be coming for all our jobs, but some are certainly more at risk than others. And in the case of the AI brains behind the newest robotaxi technology cruising the streets of Las Vegas, and after getting to experience what Zoox is all about, I’m wholly on board with it—apologies to the cabbies and Uber drivers out there doing their thing.
Upon arriving in town for InfoComm, the signs for Zoox immediately inundated my senses at the Harry Reid International Airport. They were rather nondescript, which was enough to pique my interest as a techy. So, while waiting for the luggage to come off the baggage claim, I scanned their QR code and downloaded the app to learn a little more.
What I discovered is a brand that bills itself as the first-ever purpose-built robotaxi fleet. While other autonomous vehicles are out in the wild already—namely, Waymo and whatever Elon’s building at Tesla—Zoox is the first to not involve retrofitting their technology onto a car or be built to look like something you can get behind the wheel and drive, frankly, because there is no steering wheel. This thing is built from the ground up for the purpose of shuttling people to and from their destination. (Granted, the company is retrofitting its tech onto certain mid-sized SUVs as it maps out new and existing markets to fine-tune its system.)
Zoox was founded in 2014 by Jesse Levinson and Tim Kentley-Klay. The two spent a number of years working on the platform before catching the attention of Amazon in 2020. The online retail giant purchased the company in June of that year (ostensibly to improve their own autonomous delivery tech) for some $1.2 billion, and the first driverless cabs were on the roads for testing by 2023. Today, Zoox continues to slowly roll out across a limited number of locations. The platform officially went live in Las Vegas in September 2025 and has been offering free rides during this beta test period as the team looks to fine tune the service.
No official numbers have been shared as far as the size of the fleet but estimates put it at a few dozen or upwards of 75 total Zoox robotaxis between the Las Vegas and San Francisco markets. And the company announced earlier this year their plans to enter the Miami, Austin, Dallas, and Phoenix markets in the near future. Its website also lists (but doesn’t link, quite yet) to Atlanta and Los Angeles, hinting at possible launches in those markets too.
Momentum for the company is picking up as well. In addition to the new locations, Zoox has announced a partnership with Uber in Las Vegas that will let users book a Zoox through the Uber app, and last year the company opened a massive manufacturing facility in the San Francisco Bay Area that will enable it to assemble some 10,000 robotaxis a year when it reaches full capacity. Prior to that, they were rolling about one per day off the line.
All that is good and well for the company. But the investments made and work done would mean absolutely nothing if the experience itself was, for lack of a better term, complete shit. Which is why I was desperate to find my way into one before leaving town.
Recapping the Ride
In a word, the experience was seamless. There were just a few minor hiccups with the ordering of the ride that I’ll get into below, but overall, from the time I stepped into the vehicle until I got the my destination, it was a familiar albeit completely brand new experience.
To be frank, I felt safer driving around Vegas in a Zoox than I did in any Uber, Lyft, or taxi throughout the week. I can’t really explain why, but I really had no problem putting my blind trust into the sensors that were guiding this thing. If anything, what I didn’t trust were the other drivers around me who are more unpredictable than a robotaxi that’s just trying to follow the basic rules of the road.
On those hiccups, Zoox has admitted through recent software update notices that it’s working to improve things like pickup time estimates. There’s still work to do there, for sure. With only so many robotaxis out on the road, getting one was a chore—they’re constantly in use, so the queue is rather long—and then once I was able to hail one through the app, the expected wait time was about 40 minutes. Figuring I had time, I went to run an errand at the hotel desk, only to see the wait time skip down to 15 minutes by the time I reached the lobby, and then again down to 1 minute as I was next in line. The 40 minutes took all of 3 minutes to elapse, and I found myself sprinting to the pickup point.
Then, once I got there, perhaps because I wasn’t close enough to the robotaxi, it decided there wasn’t a spot to pull over safely, so it needed to “loop back around.” Well, if you’ve ever been to Vegas, you know that looping back around in a hotel area means exiting back out onto the Strip, finding a place to safely u-turn, and coming all the way back into the hotel drop-off/pickup area. That took the Zoox another 10 minutes.
Once it found me, my weeklong dreams of getting into one of these things was finally fulfilled.
A press of a button on the app allows you to open the doors and step into this toaster-on-wheels. The vehicle itself is a four-seater with two seats on either side of the cabin that face each other. The ride will only start when passengers are securely buckled. Once strapped in, the screen that’s present along the outer edge of the seat will ask you if you’re ready to go. Tapping it closes the doors and allows the Zoox to depart.
The experience from this point forward can be entirely dictated by the passenger. Prior to the Zoox arriving, you’re able to select from a number of different themes. And once inside, you can connect via Bluetooth to play your own music or choose from a variety of stations. The touch display also gives you control over the comfort settings, a personal fan, and monitor the trip details. The armrest on the opposite side of you provides access to a USB-C port so you can charge your device while on the move.
Being alone in the cabin, it felt rather roomy, but I didn’t get the sense that it’d be cramped with three other people in there. The Tesla-esque see-through roof made it feel taller than it really is, and the wide bench gave me plenty of room to manspread comfortably.
Two aspects of the ride stood out to me that you wouldn’t necessarily find on a spec sheet but, nevertheless, are worth mentioning. First, there’s no awkward pressure to talk to some driver that you have no reason for knowing other than the fact you happened to pair with them on your respective ridesharing app. And second, if I wasn’t trying to soak up every moment in the Zoox, I could’ve easily seen myself breaking out the laptop to knock out a bit of work while waiting to arrive at my destination. It felt more like a meeting room on wheels rather than a car. And that, to me, is kind of the point of these robotaxis. It’s an experience so uniquely different from a normal car. It can be a social space or a meeting space, allowing you to focus on what you need to focus on throughout the duration of the ride instead of worrying about driving or the driver.
Disembarking was very similar to getting into the Zoox. Once we arrived, the screen alerted me when it had safely stopped, and a button popped up that allowed me to end the ride. Once complete, no tips were needed or demanded. The doors simply opened and I was able to step out and be on my way. Zoox did its job, and it did it really well.
