Amazon’s inventive robotaxi hints at the shape of future cars

Behind Waymo and Tesla, Zoox is the third robotaxi service making moves in the US. Amazon’s running trial drives in Vegas, similar to what Tesla did in Austin. But Zoox isn’t just another Waymo or Tesla. Yes, it’s a robotaxi… but have you seen the car?

Waymo and Tesla’s robotaxis still look like traditional cars. Zoox doesn’t. It’s something entirely new, and what could be our first real glimpse at what cars might look like in the next five to ten years.

So let’s take a look at Zoox: what it is, why it looks the way it does, and what it tells us about the future of cars.

A room on wheels

Designed as a driverless car from the start

You can see a lot of thought has gone into designing the Zoox — its tall box shape gives it the maximum inside dimensions to seat four passengers in comfort, with plenty of headroom. And they are just passengers — there’s no space for a driver.

The seating layout breaks away from the norm, too. Unlike traditional cars (or even other robotaxis) the seats don’t all face forward. Instead, there are two-seat couches facing each other, as you would arrange the furniture in a small lounge. And technically, there’s no “front” or “back” to face anyway: the Zoox is can drive equally well in either direction.

Made for passengers, not drivers

A lounge with seatbelts

Because no-one will drive a Zoox, the front/rear view — depending on which way the car is driving — is minimal. Instead, large roof-to-floor windows on the sides give a panoramic view of the scenery as you pass by.

Zoox has been in development since 2014, and was bought by Amazon in 2020 for $1.2 billion. It is interesting where Zoox fits into the Amazon tech empire: in the diverse services and devices business, together with things like Alexa, Kindle, and the nascent Project Kuiper satellite internet business.

From robotaxis to the future of motoring

Form follows function

Credit: Zoox

Future cars will be fully self-driving, which is a given for two reasons:

• Proper self-driving will be safer and more efficient than human drivers.
• There will be no reason to waste space inside the car to accommodate a driver that is no longer needed

Variations on the box on wheels

Zoox is shaped like an upright box because it is an urban taxi. This gives it the maximum inside space and the smallest practical footprint. It is not designed to go very fast or cover long distances, so the not very aerodynamic shape is fine.

Bigger boxes or flatter boxes

You can make the box any shape you want. Think of our cars today and how they could work without a driver — a big box minivan for a large family or as a corporate transport, a really efficiently designed delivery van, a pickup truck that is mainly load bed, a more streamlined box for longer distances and higher speeds.

Think inside the box

Losing the driver means gaining the freedom to customize your box. Loads of seats for lots of people, or a single recliner facing a big TV. You can have a bed, or your office, or even a compact boardroom in your box.

Your car will become a way to get from here to there without the distraction of having to steer it there. The interior can be as opulent as you can afford, or as sparse as your budget allows.

Public transport

The next logical step

Credit: pexels life of pix

The self-driving box-on-wheels will also make public transport more viable. The reason we don’t use buses or trains is that most of us have no way to get from home or work to the train or bus stops.

Our bigger cities are traffic nightmares, with people citing rush hour traffic as a deciding factor in choosing one job over another, or even taking a pay cut to work from home.

Buses take cars off the road

A bus can take between 30 and 70 cars off the road, while a train can remove over 500. So why isn’t public transport used more widely?

A bus needs a driver, and a city needs lots of buses running during peak hours, and far fewer in the long slack hours in between. That means paying drivers who are only fully utilized for a few hours a day, and essentially being paid to sit idle the rest of the time.

A self-driving electric bus removes this inefficiency, and because no driver architecture is needed, it can carry more passengers. Trains are more efficient than buses, but they need massive and very expensive infrastructure to work, something cities like Los Angeles were never really designed to accommodate.

First and last mile gap

But the biggest drawback for both buses and trains is the first/last mile gap between where they stop and where their passengers live or work. In big cities in India and China, three-wheel scooters called tuk-tuks are often used for this, but they are noisy and cause a lot of air pollution.

The box on wheels, optimized to carry one or two people between home or work and the bus or train stop, is already in development by carmakers like Renault and Toyota. You can see it: tap your phone and a little car arrives to take you to your bus.

So, the future of the car is…?

There will always be people who want their own cars, because of their irregular schedule, or because they prefer their own space. Cars with steering wheels will probably be around for a generation or so. But the car, as we experienced as part of our culture for over a century, will increasingly become more autonomous, and most likely, be operated by ride-share companies.