Zoox, the autonomous vehicle unit under Amazon, said it will broaden its U.S. testing program by beginning operations in Dallas and Phoenix and by opening a centralized fleet operations facility in Scottsdale, Arizona. The company said these steps increase its active testing footprint to 10 markets nationwide.
Existing testing locations include Las Vegas, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Austin, Miami, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. In the two new Sun Belt cities Zoox plans to deploy a limited number of retrofitted sport utility vehicles initially to perform manual mapping activities. These vehicles will later be used for autonomous testing with a safety driver present.
As part of the rollout, Zoox will establish depots in both Dallas and Phoenix to support local vehicle operations. The company also said it will open a facility in Scottsdale it calls the "Fusion Center" - a command hub designed to manage fleet operations, provide remote guidance and handle rider support functions.
Zoox said the expansion is expected to result in the creation of hundreds of jobs. The company emphasized that the testing environments in Phoenix and Dallas contrast with dense urban centers - these Sun Belt markets feature sprawling road networks and environmental factors such as intense desert heat and dust. Zoox said those conditions will help exercise and validate its sensor arrays, battery systems and artificial intelligence platforms.
The robotaxi unit has been scaling operations progressively, including limited service launches in Las Vegas and a pilot rider program in San Francisco late last year. Company figures cited by Zoox note it has accumulated more than 1 million autonomous miles and has provided rides to in excess of 300,000 riders so far.
The announcements come as Alphabet's Waymo continues to lead commercial deployments in the sector and other automakers are pursuing their own approaches. Zoox’s expansion aims to broaden the range of driving conditions encountered by its fleet and to centralize operational oversight via the Scottsdale facility.
Separately, U.S. regulators are convening a national autonomous vehicle safety forum on Tuesday. The forum is expected to be attended by the chief executives of Waymo, Zoox and the self-driving company Aurora.
About the industry update
This development reflects Zoox’s incremental approach to growing its operational footprint while validating vehicle hardware and software in diverse conditions. The company’s immediate focus in the new markets will be mapping and supervised testing before moving toward unsupervised autonomous runs with safety drivers available.
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