By Keith Laing, Bloomberg
The Trump administration has cleared the way for Zoox, the autonomous-vehicle subsidiary of Amazon.com Inc., to demonstrate self-driving cars that lack traditional driving controls like steering wheels.
US auto safety regulators granted an exemption to federal vehicle safety standards for purpose-built driverless cars made by Zoox, the Transportation Department said in a statement on Wednesday. The decision follows a lengthy period of back-and-forth between the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the self-driving car developer, which announced its driverless car designed without steering wheels or brake pedals in 2022.
NHTSA said all the self driving vehicles made by Zoox operating on public roads are doing so under the new exemption. It’s unclear how many of those cars are in operation.
The decision is a boost for Zoox, which in June opened a robotaxi production facility in California where it plans to eventually churn out 10,000 purpose-built robotaxis a year. The Amazon-owned company’s robotaxi is akin to a shuttle and has no steering wheel or pedals, with four inward-facing seats.
Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
US auto safety standards typically require vehicles to have human controls. That’s created regulatory headaches for companies including Zoox, General Motors Co. and Tesla Inc. that have designed self-driving cars without those features.
NHTSA has taken steps this year to remove barriers for self-driving cars, something that Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk had advocated for prior to his stint in the Trump administration.
The agency granted Zoox’s exemption under a policy updated earlier this year to allow domestically produced autonomous vehicles to qualify for exemptions previously offered only to imports.
The agency in June also said it would update a separate exemption authority to speed the review process for self-driving car exemptions, a move also intended to boost deployment.
–With assistance from Spencer Soper.
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