Amazon's Zoox robotaxi unit is ramping up vehicle production at a new facility in Hayward, California.
Amazon -owned autonomous vehicle startup Zoox on Wednesday opened a sprawling new manufacturing facility in the San Francisco Bay Area, paving the way for more robotaxi production as it plans a commercial rollout of its fleet later this year.
The company will use the site in Hayward, California, to increase its robotaxi fleet significantly. The facility is currently producing one robotaxi per day, but Zoox said it expects to accelerate production over the coming year.
At full scale, it will have the capacity to assemble 10,000 robotaxis a year, with roughly three robotaxis being produced per hour, the company said. Zoox did not provide a timeline for reaching that production level.
"We don't need to crank out a vehicle every minute because we're not selling these things," Zoox CEO Aicha Evans said on the facility's production floor during a tour.
Zoox needs more of its toaster-shaped robotaxis to roll off the assembly line in order to fulfill its mission of deploying a commercial ride-hailing service in the U.S. Zoox, founded 11 years ago and purchased by Amazon for $1.3 billion in 2020, began testing its robotaxis on public roads in 2023.
The company currently has a few dozen robotaxis on public roads in Foster City, California, San Francisco and Las Vegas. Zoox expects to eventually operate between 500 and 1,000 robotaxis in small-to-medium sized cities where it offers ride-hailing services, Evans said.