Amazon’s Zoox opens its first main robotaxi manufacturing facility

Amazon-owned autonomous automobile firm Zoox has opened its first full-fledged manufacturing facility, the place it expects to have the ability to someday construct 10,000 robotaxis per 12 months.

The ability marks the newest step in Zoox’s evolution out of the event section. The corporate is at the moment testing autos in a number of U.S. cities, and providing rides to staff in Las Vegas and San Francisco. Public entry is predicted to start with an early-rider program in 2026.

The 220,000-square-foot manufacturing facility is situated in Hayward, California close to its Foster Metropolis headquarters. That is Zoox’s second manufacturing facility within the Bay Space, including to the meeting warehouse in close by Fremont.

Zoox says the brand new manufacturing facility will likely be used for engineering, software program and {hardware} integration, meeting, storage, and testing. The Hayward manufacturing facility will assemble the custom-built Zoox robotaxis for a number of industrial markets, starting with Las Vegas after which San Francisco. Zoox plans to roll out industrial robotaxi operations in Austin and Miami within the subsequent few years.

The corporate says the power’s “distinctive structure and constructing gear” will be capable to adapt to completely different automobile designs as its robotaxi lineup expands sooner or later. The ability will likely be operated by a mixture of human staff and robots. Human staff will deal with the majority of the work, in accordance with Zoox, which stated robots will likely be used for particular duties, resembling making use of adhesive for glass set up and transporting the robotaxi down the meeting line.