KVIG Informative

Federal regulators have never allowed a car without a steering wheel to charge passengers for rides — until now. Las Vegas is about to be the first place in the country where that happens.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration granted Amazon-owned Zoox a temporary federal exemption in late July allowing the company to charge fares for rides in its custom-built robotaxi, a four-seat pod with no steering wheel, pedals or driver’s seat. It’s the first commercial exemption of its kind issued by federal regulators.

The exemption covers eight federal motor vehicle safety standards written decades ago for human-operated vehicles — requirements like steering wheel controls and pedal-based braking systems that Zoox’s purpose-built vehicle was never designed to meet, according to NHTSA.

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Under the exemption’s terms, Zoox can deploy up to 2,500 vehicles annually over a two-year period, subject to what the agency described as an oversight structure designed to evolve alongside the company’s technology. NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison said the systems in place on Zoox’s vehicle exceed the performance requirements of a standard compliant vehicle.

Zoox has operated in Las Vegas since 2019, running out of a 190,000-square-foot facility in the southwest valley. The company has offered free rides to the public in limited zones of Las Vegas and San Francisco as part of its testing programs, and says more than 500,000 people have ridden in its vehicles so far, with another 500,000 on a waitlist.

Paid service is expected to launch in Las Vegas in August, according to a company announcement, though Zoox has not released pricing details. The vehicles are designed to travel up to 75 mph in either direction without needing to turn around, using face-to-face seating for four passengers.

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The exemption bars Zoox from selling its vehicles to other companies, keeping the robotaxi pods exclusively part of Zoox’s own ride-hailing service rather than available to competitors or private buyers.

Waymo and Tesla both operate robotaxi services using modified conventional cars still built around a steering wheel. Zoox’s bet is that removing it entirely is the better long-term design — and Las Vegas is where the federal government just agreed to let the company find out, one paid ride at a time.