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Zoox, a self-driving car startup owned by Amazon, is the latest company facing a federal investigation over its technology, joining Tesla and Ford Motor Co.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said late last week that it had opened a preliminary investigation into Zoox’s driving assistance system. The regulator’s Office of Defects Investigation had received reports of two incidents where Zoox’s vehicles suddenly braked. Each incident led to a rear-end collision and caused minor injuries.
Both incidents involved one of Toyota Motor’s Highlander SUVs equipped with Zoox’s Automated Driving System (ADS). A motorcyclist was trailing behind the Highlanders and, in both cases, collided with the SUVs after the sudden braking.
The NHTSA said Friday that its initial inquiry confirmed that “each of the Zoox vehicles was operating with the ADS engaged in the moments leading up to each collision.”
The NHTSA says there are about 500 vehicles equipped with Zoox’s ADS. The regulator will evaluate the performance of Zoox’s ADS “particularly relating to the collisions listed in this resume, the behavior in crosswalks around vulnerable road users, and in other similar rear-end collision scenarios.”
Foster City, California-based Zoox said the company is reviewing the NHTSA’s requests for information, adding that it remains “committed to working closely with NHTSA to answer their questions.”
In March, Zoox said it would expand its testing in Foster City and Las Vegas to a wider area and allow its self-driving “robotaxis” to hit 45 miles per hour, up from 35 miles per hour. The move came shortly after its primary competitor, Google’s Waymo, began expanding in California.
Zoox, which was acquired by Amazon in 2020 for $1.3 billion, is also facing a probe opened by federal regulators in March 2023. The NHTSA said it was investigating the process and technical data used Zoox used to certify that its robotaxis met federal requirements to traverse public roads.
This latest inquiry from the NHTSA highlights the agency’s skepticism of self-driving technology and how safe they really are.
The NHTSA on April 29 opened an investigation into Ford’s BlueCruise driver assistance technology after two fatal incidents earlier this year. Just days earlier, the agency opened — another — probe into Tesla’s Autopilot driver assistance technology, which has been linked to more than 200 crashes and 29 deaths. Tesla has been given a July 1 deadline to respond to questions posed by the NHTSA regarding its December recall of more than 2 million electric cars over issues with Autopilot.