Amazon will take robot cars to a whole new level

Amazon.com’s interest in acquiring a self-driving car pioneer is the prime example (pun intended) of how expectations for driverless vehicles have been recalibrated.

The e-commerce giant is in advanced talks to buy Zoox for less than the $3.2 billion at which it was valued in 2018, the Wall Street Journal reported last week. Given the California-based startup’s approach to autonomous cars, its fate is particularly instructive.

In a very crowded field, Zoox was practically alone in aiming to build a whole new kind of electric-powered vehicle, and to operate the fleet itself. Peers such as Alphabet’s Waymo, General Motors’ Cruise unit, Ford Motor and Volkswagen’s joint venture Argo AI, and Aurora Innovations have focused solely on developing the self-driving technology that could subsequently be fitted into vehicles.

Zoox wanted to be Tesla, Waymo and Uber Technologies all rolled into one.

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