Zoox said customers can hail paid robotaxi rides to and from Harry Reid International Airport beginning Thursday. Pickup and drop-off are at both terminals near baggage claim. [1] Uber and Lyft can still drop passengers at the terminal curb. Their pickup is a five- to ten-minute walk from baggage claim to the upper floor of a nearby parking garage. [1] Amazon's robotaxi is first at the airport door. That is not the same sentence as Uber lost Las Vegas.
Wednesday's Uber file held Dara Khosrowshahi's cut of about 10 percent, about 3,300 corporate jobs, with savings "reinvest[ed]" in "the autonomous future." Drivers were not in the 10 percent. Corporate layers were. Thursday is the other half of that week. Uber fires coordinators to fund autonomy. Zoox takes the pickup Uber still makes humans walk to.
The Amazon-owned company spent more than a decade on a purpose-built robotaxi with no steering wheel and no pedals. It gave rides in Las Vegas for a year without being allowed to operate as a true commercial service. [1] That changed in August, when federal safety regulators granted a temporary exemption from certain motor-vehicle safety standards. The exemption lasts two years and allows up to 2,500 vehicles. It spans eight federal standards, including windshield defrosting and light-vehicle braking. [1] Those are the rules written for cars with drivers. Zoox had to be excused from them to charge. Charging for rides began August 10. Testing in San Diego and Houston was announced in the same burst, along with a published safety framework. [1] A temporary waiver is not a permanent design rule. The curb is still a two-year clock on 2,500 pods, not an open-ended fleet.
Airports concentrate the part of ride-hail that luggage makes slow. A traveler who lands at Harry Reid and opens Uber is buying a walk to a garage, then a wait, then a car with a person in it. A traveler who opens Zoox is being promised the terminal door. [1] That is why TechCrunch called the expansion a critical destination. It is also why the garage walk is not a footnote. It is the product the human networks still sell, on the morning after those networks' corporate parent cut layers to fund machines.
Kirsten Korosec, filing for TechCrunch at 5:12 a.m. Pacific, treated the airport as the destination that matters in ride-hail. [1] Airports are where the trip starts with luggage and a clock. A five-minute garage walk is the product Uber and Lyft sell there. Zoox's claim is that the walk is the tell. Do not write that Uber lost LAS. Write that Zoox is first at the airport, and that Uber is both competitor and partner.
More robotaxis are permitted, not yet queued at baggage claim. Tesla, Uber, and Waymo received Nevada Transportation Authority permits last month to operate commercial robotaxi service in Clark County. Together those permits would allow up to 8,000 robotaxis across the county over 12 months. [1] Uber plans to run robotaxis through Hyundai's Motional and through Zoox. [1] The company that just cut 3,300 people to fund autonomy is also a customer of the vehicle now sitting at the terminal. Clark County has been a testing ground for years. The next twelve months are when permits turn into competing curbs, if they do. [1] A permit is not a pod at baggage claim. Zoox's Thursday advantage is the door it already occupies, on a two-year federal clock, while Uber remains both the garage walk and a listed partner. That is a systems diagram, not a funeral for the garage.
TechCrunch's file is Amazon winning the airport curb. Yesterday's MSM file was Uber decluttering its org chart to buy the next machine. The paper's job is the same week. Corporate Uber shrinks to pay for a future that does not need as many humans behind the wheel. Amazon's robotaxi is already at the door those humans still walk. First at the curb is the Thursday fact. Lost the airport is a verdict nobody filed.
-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco