Amazon-owned Zoox issued a recall Tuesday over concerns its autonomous driving system caused vehicles to cross over the center lane line near intersections or block crosswalks. The voluntary recall of its software affected 332 vehicles, according to documents filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
While there have not been any collisions associated with the issue, Zoox noted in the NHTSA filing that it could increase the risk of a crash. The company provides free rides to the public in its driverless Zoox vehicles in parts of San Francisco and Las Vegas.
A Zoox spokesperson told TechCrunch the company identified some instances in which its vehicles made maneuvers that, while common for human drivers, didn’t meet its standards. For example, in an effort to avoid blocking certain intersections at a red light, the robotaxi might stop in a crosswalk. In other instances, the robotaxi made a late turn, resulting in a wide turn, according to a spokesperson’s emailed statement.
The issue was initially identified on August 26 when a Zoox robotaxi made a wide right turn, crossed partially into the opposing travel lane, and temporarily stopped in front of the oncoming travel lane, according to the NHTSA filing.
Zoox monitored its data for additional lane crossings near intersections, ultimately identifying 62 instances between August 26 and December 5. The company said in the filing it was in “ongoing conversations with NHTSA about the frequency, severity, and root causes of these occurrences.”
The company updated its software on November 7 and again in mid-December to address all of the issues.
“We have successfully identified and deployed targeted software improvements to address the root causes of these incidents,” the statement reads. “Today, we’re submitting a voluntary software recall because transparency and safety is foundational to Zoox, and we want to be open with the public and regulators about how we are constantly refining and improving our technology.”
The software recall affected Zoox vehicles operating on public roads between March 13 and December 18, according to the filing.
Zoox has issued several software recalls this year, including one in March to address unexpected hard braking. That recall followed a preliminary investigation by NHTSA that was opened after the agency received two reports of motorcyclists colliding with the back of Zoox vehicles.
In May, Zoox filed two software recalls to address concerns about the system’s ability to predict the movement of other road users.
On Tuesday, Zoox debuted a program called “Zoox Explorers” that invites users in San Francisco to download the Zoox app, and get on the waitlist to potentially take a free ride in one of these—I guess you could call it a “buggy,” since Zoox doesn’t want us to call it a car. Using the app could already get you a free ride starting in September, but only if you were going up or down the Las Vegas Strip.
The Zoox vehicle has a plausible reason for looking so cutesy. It’s a purpose-built robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals. It resembles nothing so much as certain ferris wheel gondolas—an interior that only has room for two bench seats at opposite ends, where passengers face one another instead of all looking forward.
San Francisco’s Mission, SoMa, and Design District neighborhoods will be covered by the Zoox Explorers program—areas where a Zoox could plausibly encounter a competing Waymo, and there’s simply no telling what would happen then.
Once you’re on the waiting list, according to Zoox, the company will “notify you when you can join the preview and request a ride.” Also, according to the Zoox site, the rider “can’t take over the driving,” but is provided controls for the temperature and music. You can also “initiate an emergency stop if you must exit the robotaxi.” I can only assume this last feature is known as the “puke button” around the Zoox office.
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The autonomous vehicle industry is years — maybe decades — from maturing. And so there’s still a Wild West quality to the sector, in spite of the steady stream of announcements that do show marked progress. Two such news items from this week illustrate my point of progress, possibility, and even a bit of peril (at least to the ups and downs a public market can provide).
First up is Gatik, an AV and logistics startup that is applying its tech to middle-mile trucks. The startup, which I first wrote about in 2019, announced a multi-year and expanded commercial partnership with Canada’s largest retailer, Loblaw. Under the deal, Gatik will deploy 20 autonomous trucks by the end of 2025 to provide driverless delivery to Loblaw’s network of stores in the greater Toronto area. Co-founder and CEO Gautam Narang told me the company will add another 30 autonomous trucks to the fleet by the end of 2026.
The deal is notable, and not just because of the fleet size. As Narang explained to me, the trucks will be handling the full regional network for Loblaw. This means these third-generation AV trucks will operate autonomously to pick up products from two distribution centers and make deliveries to over 300 retail stores. “These are multiple brands within the Loblaw umbrella,” he said.
In other words, this is not some fixed-route pilot program. It’s commercial, and it’s complex.
Next up is Kodiak Robotics, another startup I have reported on since its founding. The company, which is developing self-driving trucks for highway, industrial, and defense uses, began trading on Nasdaq this week under the tickers KDK and KDKRW.
The company, which is now called Kodiak AI, went public via a merger with special-purpose acquisition company Ares Acquisition Corporation II, an affiliate of Ares Management. The deal valued the startup at about $2.5 billion.
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Kodiak raised $275 million in financing. More than $212.5 million came from certain institutional investors, including $145 million in PIPE funding and about $62.9 million in trust cash from Ares. It should be noted that the trust cash is smaller (it was $562 million), as some SPAC investors redeemed their shares.
I spoke to founder and CEO Don Burnette the day before Kodiak’s big debut about why he took the company public — let alone via a SPAC. It was a big moment for Burnette, whose family was on hand to watch him ring the bell and mark the milestone. The stock was trading at about $7.70 Friday, down about 10% from its market open.
“As you can imagine, building and scaling a transformative autonomous driving company is very capital intensive, and we were looking to access the public markets as a path forward for the company. And when choosing between, you know, traditional IPO or a SPAC, we considered all the options,” he said. “We felt like, from a timing perspective, it was the right decision for the company (to take the SPAC route).”
It should be noted that Burnette is also quite bullish on defense. Here’s why:
“I think autonomy is the future of ground transportation broadly,” he said, before noting the benefits within defense for logistics and reconnaissance operations for ground vehicles. “One of the key things is defense requires unstructured autonomy, and this is one of the areas where we become specialists.”
A little bird
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
A few weeks ago, we wrote about some trouble at Hyundai‘s electric air taxi startup Supernal, including that the company had stopped work on its air taxi program and that its CEO and CTO were out.
This week, a little bird told us that a wider reorg of Supernal’s C-suite was afoot — something Hyundai Motor Group has now confirmed to us.
Chief strategy officer Jaeyong Song and chief safety officer Tracy Lamb are part of a “transition to new leadership,” according to the Korean conglomerate. Song’s departure is particularly notable, as he was once the VP of Hyundai’s Advanced Air Mobility division, which Supernal was spun out of in 2021. Also gone is Lina Yang, who most recently served as chief of staff to the startup’s now-former CEO, but who also served as Supernal’s “Head of Intelligent Systems” before that.
RememberMoxion Power, the portable battery startup that raised $110 million before going bankrupt? The founders are back with a new startup called Anode Technology Company, which has designed a mobile battery and inverter that can be used for EV charging and supplying remote power to construction sites and live events. The startup just raised $9 million in seed funding in a round led by Eclipse Ventures; its partner, Jiten Behl, who spearheaded the deal, was previously Rivian’s chief growth officer. Apparently, Behl’s interest was sparked by his experience at Rivian.
Side note: Palo Alto-based venture capital firm Eclipse sure has been busy this year. The VC firm led the $105 million round of Also, the micromobility startup that spun out of Rivian, and recently hired longtime T. Rowe Price Group investor Joe Fath as partner and head of growth.
The firm doesn’t explicitly focus on transportation, but some of its portfolio companies in this sector include Arc, Bedrock Robotics,Reliable Robotics, Skyryse,and Wayve.
Other deals that got my attention …
Rapido, a popular ride-hailing platform in India that competes with Uber, doubled its valuation to $2.3 billion following a secondary share sale by food delivery giant Swiggy. The share sale comes just weeks after Rapido began piloting food deliveries, edging into Swiggy’s core territory.
Telo, the tiny electric truck developer, raised $20 million in a Series A funding round co-led by designer and Telo co-founder Yves Béhar and Tesla co-founder Marc Tarpenning, who is on Telo’s board. Additional investment came from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and early-stage funds like TO VC, E12 Ventures, and Neo.
TheTrump administration is seeking up to a 10% stake in Lithium Americas in exchange for renegotiating the repayment period of a $2.26 billion Department of Energy loan. GM is a major investor in the Canadian company, which is developing a lithium mine in Nevada that is expected to be the largest in the Western Hemisphere.
Notable reads and other tidbits
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
Hackers have had quite an active week in the transportation sector. Stellantisconfirmed a data breach involving customers’ personal information. The breach is linked to a hack of its Salesforce database. Meanwhile, a hack that began last Friday and targeted check-in systems provided by Collins Aerospacecaused delays at Brussels, Berlin, and Dublin airports, as well as London’s Heathrow. The U.K.’s National Crime Agency has arrested a man in connection to the ransomware attack. And finally, Jaguar Land Roversaid it will not resume production at its factories for yet another week as it continues to grapple with fallout from a cyberattack.
Battery materials startup Silastarted operations at its facility in Moses Lake, Washington, a milestone that could pave the way for longer-range, faster-charging EVs. The factory is the first large-scale silicon anode factory in the West and will initially be capable of making enough battery materials for 20,000 to 50,000 EVs. Future expansion could fulfill demand for as many as 2.5 million vehicles.
Automakers continue to pull back on EVs and electrified vehicles. Honda is ending U.S. production of its Acura ZDX electric vehicle that was being built by General Motors in Tennessee, CNBC reported. And Stellantis has canceled plans to produce a 4xe plug-in hybrid Jeep Gladiator in North America by the end of 2025. Which EV is next on the chopping block?
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administrationopened an investigation into Rivian over issues with the seat belts in its electric delivery vans that could introduce additional risk in the event of a crash, Bloomberg reported.
Tesla asked the Environmental Protection Agency not to roll back current vehicle emissions standards, breaking from other major automakers that want to see the rules eased.
TuneIn, an audio streaming service, is collaborating with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to deliver emergency alerts directly to drivers.
Volvo Cars is pledging a commitment to U.S. production. The company said it will continue to invest in its U.S. car plant near Charleston, South Carolina, and announced plans to expand the factory to produce a hybrid vehicle by the end of the decade.
Waymo launched “Waymo for Business,” a new service designed for companies to set up accounts so their employees can access robotaxis in cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco.
Zoox has asked federal regulators for an exemption that would allow the Amazon-owned autonomous vehicle company to commercially deploy its custom-built robotaxis, which lack traditional controls like pedals and a steering wheel.
One more thing
Finally, proof of life from Luminar founder Austin Russell.
You may remember that Russell was mysteriously and suddenly replaced in May as CEO of the lidar company he created. The company has never truly explained his departure, only that it was the result of a “code of business conduct and ethics inquiry” initiated by the board.
Russell has been silent; while he remains on Luminar’s board, he hasn’t signed any of the filings the company has submitted with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission since he was replaced. This week, he reappeared as the co-founder of a new company called Russell AI Labs. It’s billed as a “platform that backs and builds transformative AI and frontier technology companies.”
It doesn’t seem like his troubles at Luminar have affected his ability to attract high-profile support or make eyebrow-raising deals. Russell’s co-founders are Markus Schäfer, CTO and board member at Mercedes-Benz Group AG, and Murtaza Ahmed, who served as a managing director at Goldman Sachs before joining SoftBank and was a partner in the $100 billion Vision Fund and managing partner of its $5 billion Latin America Fund.
As part of Russell AI Lab’s debut, the startup announced it has taken a $300 million stake in agentic AI company Emergence AI.
Amazon’s Zoox driverless transportation company has started testing its robotaxi on open public roads — with employees on board, for now.
The company said Monday that it conducted an initial run of its shuttle service for workers at its headquarters in Foster City, California on February 11, a key step in its efforts to make autonomous vehicles widely available.
“With the announcement of the maiden run of our autonomous employee shuttle, we are adding to the progress this industry has seen over the last year and bringing Zoox one step closer to a commercialized purpose-built robotaxi service for the general public,” Zoox CEO Aicha Evans said in a statement.
Full-time employees will now be able to travel in the self-driving taxi on the route between Zoox’s two main office buildings. The vehicle can carry as many as four people at a time and drive at speeds of up to 35 miles per hour.
The startup said its robotaxi — which underwent “rigorous” testing on private roads and has received necessary approvals from the California Department of Motor Vehicles — can handle left- and right-hand turns, traffic lights, pedestrians, vehicles and other potential obstacles on the journey.
Zoox, which was founded in 2014 and purchased by Amazon in 2020, is unique in its approach to designing electric self-driving vehicles.
Most autonomous cars under development resemble those currently on the road. But Zoox has ditched the steering wheel and brake pedal, claiming those features are unnecessary when there’s no human driver. Seats are designed to face each other to facilitate conversation between passengers.
Google, General Motors and other tech and transportation companieshave poured billions of dollars into self-driving vehicles for more than a decade with the promise that they would deliver improved safety and convenience for riders. Yet some evangelists have abandoned their efforts in recent months, with high costs and elusive profits becoming harder to stomach as the economy slows.
In October, Ford and Volkswagen, two of the world’s largest automakers, shut down joint efforts to develop self-driving taxis through a venture called Argo AI.
Ford CEO Jim Farley said at the time that he’s still “optimistic” about a future for fully self-driving cars, “but profitable, fully autonomous vehicles at scale are a long way off.” The company wouldn’t necessarily have to create the technology itself, he added.
