{"id":242055,"date":"2026-08-02T08:05:42","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T13:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/zoox-gets-the-green-light-to-offer-paid-rides"},"modified":"2026-08-02T08:05:42","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T13:05:42","slug":"zoox-gets-the-green-light-to-offer-paid-rides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/zoox-gets-the-green-light-to-offer-paid-rides","title":{"rendered":"Zoox gets the green light to offer paid rides"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mMTFEE9T_YE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The Department of Transportation has approved a request from the driverless vehicle company Zoox to start offering rides to paying customers. A California-based company owned by Amazon, Zoox has been testing its driverless electric vehicle with free rides. Now, it has approval to commercially deploy up to 5,000 vehicles over the next two years, starting in Las Vegas. Unlike Google\u2019s Waymo, which adds driverless technology to existing vehicles, Zoox\u2019s vehicles look like a box on wheels and don\u2019t have steering wheels or pedals. Find \u201cNPR News Now\u201d wherever you listen to podcasts. Host: Jeanine Herbst\/NPR Reporter: Camila Domonoske\/NPR Producer: Michael Zamora\/NPR<\/p>\n<p>Follow NPR elsewhere, too: \u2022 Instagram: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/npr\/\">https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/npr\/<\/a> \u2022 TikTok: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@npr\">https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@npr<\/a> \u2022 Facebook: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/NPR\">https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/NPR<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Department of Transportation has approved a request from the driverless vehicle company Zoox to start offering rides to paying customers. A California-based company owned by Amazon, Zoox has been testing its driverless electric vehicle with free rides. Now, it has approval to commercially deploy up to 5,000 vehicles over the next two years, starting [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,17,1491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robotics-ai","category-sustainability","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242055\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}