SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Amazon's Zoox will start giving free robotaxi rides through parts of San Francisco as it accelerates its attempt to challenge Waymo's early lead in the race to transport passengers in self-driving vehicles.
The expansion announced Tuesday will be confined to a few major San Francisco neighborhoods and limited to people who signed up on a waiting list to ride in Zoox's gondola-shaped robotaxis, which have no steering wheel. The San Francisco launch comes less than three months after the Amazon-owned robotaxi company launched its first ride-hailing service along the Las Vegas strip.
But Zoox still doesn't charge people to ride in its robotaxis, something Waymo has been doing since its debut in Phoenix five years ago. The free rides are the next major milestone before charging fares like Waymo and traditional ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft, as Amazon tried to make inroads in autonomous driving — a journey that began in 2020 when the e-commerce Goliath bought Zoox for $1.2 billion.
California regulators still have to approve Zoox's application to charge for rides in San Francisco — a clearance that Waymo received in August 2023 after overcoming safety concerns raised by city officials. Since then, Waymo's robotaxis have become a familiar sight throughout San Francisco, where some tourists now make a point of hitching a ride in a self-driving car along with hopping on one of the city's fabled cable cars that have been operating for 152 years.
Waymo, which started as a secret project within Google in 2009. also operates its robotaxis in San Jose, California, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Austin, Texas, with plans to expand into several other U.S. cities next year.
In another sign of Waymo's accelerating growth, its robotaxis began extending their routes beyond city streets and onto highways in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix. And on Tuesday announced plans to expand into five more U.S. cities: Miami; Dallas; San Antonio, Texas; Houston and Orlando, Florida. However, passengers won't be able to ask for rides in those five cities until next year.
Just as Waymo has already been doing, Amazon is gearing up to bring Zoox's robotaxis to other major cities, including Austin and Miami. To help Zoox realize its ambitions, Amazon converted a former bus factory into a high-tech robotaxi plant in Hayward, California — about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco. Zoox eventually hopes to make as many as 10,000 robotaxis annually at the plant.
FILE - People view a Zoox self-driving vehicle at the Zoox booth during the CES tech show, Jan. 7, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher, file)
It was no big secret that the College Football Playoff selection committee might have an “Alabama problem” by the end of Saturday's Southeastern Conference title game, especially if the Crimson Tide lost. Turns out, they got whupped so badly by Georgia, they might have solved that problem themselves.
Alabama's third loss of the season was a 28-7 beatdown that wasn't that close. And though it might seem unfair to penalize the program for playing in the SEC title game — an extra game against the third-ranked team that the others didn't have to play — it also might be hard for the committee to ignore what it saw.
The Crimson Tide came into this game ranked ninth, presumably high enough to lose and still make the 12-team field that will be announced Sunday. But No. 10 Notre Dame and No. 12 Miami are lurking behind, each with an easier schedule than the Tide, but both with a solid case for the playoff themselves.
There's not room for more than two of those three.
If the committee bypasses the Tide, it will be the second straight year that's happened. Making it worse is that last year, they were left behind in favor of SMU, a team the committee decided shouldn't be penalized for losing its conference title game (in the weaker Atlantic Coast Conference). SMU's loss was close. This one wasn't.
Now, the committee has to decide how to solve its Alabama problem.
One of the nightcaps Saturday pitted No. 17 Virginia against unranked Duke in the ACC title game. A Duke win would bring with it the possibility of the ACC champion being left out of the playoff.
The CFP rules call for the five best-ranked conference titlists to earn spots in the 12-team bracket. Tulane (American), ranked 20th in the latest CFP standings, and No. 25 James Madison (Sun Belt) each became conference champions with wins Friday night.
If the Blue Devils beat CFP No. 17 Virginia, there’s at least a chance that James Madison could be ranked ahead of them and take that spot that was presumed to be for the ACC winner.
“They’re tough. And I think they believe,” JMU coach Bob Chesney said after his team beat Troy on Friday to place the spotlight on that ACC game. “They know who they are and they know what they’re capable of.”
Though Alabama's loss provided another potentially helpful “data point” — a term the selection committee loves — Notre Dame and Miami always knew they would spend a restless night on the bubble.
The Fighting Irish, who moved down one spot despite a 49-20 win over Stanford last week, got what they needed when BYU lost badly in the Big 12 title game to kick off Saturday's title-game action. The Alabama loss didn't hurt, either.
Now, there's a chance that Notre Dame and Miami, each with 10-2 records, could be scrunched right next to each other in Sunday's rankings. The best way, of course, to compare two teams with the same record placed next to each other in the rankings would be to look at how they did if they played each other. In this case, voila, there's a “data point.” Miami beat Notre Dame in Week 1.
If they end up at 9 and 10 (see above on Alabama), then they'll both make the field and a lot of this won't matter. But if Alabama doesn't fall that much, and one of them ends up at No. 11, then the committee's treatment of the head-to-head matchup will mean everything.
This issue has come up almost every week so far. Committee chair Hunter Yurachek has never really been clear about any of it.
“A little bit of confusion. You're confused in terms of what we could have done differently and why we fell when we won 49-20,” Irish coach Marcus Freeman said. “We were up 42-6 going into the fourth quarter. I don't spend time talking about other teams, but it's what could we have done differently? I don't know.”
1 vs. 2: Will the loser of Saturday night's Ohio State-Indiana Big Ten title game drop from a top-four position and, thus, not get the valuable first-round bye? Likewise, will No. 6 Ole Miss, No. 7 Texas A&M and No. 8 Oklahoma — all of the SEC, all of whom didn't play — jump past the Tide?
Home field and other things: Alabama's loss left the Sooners in good shape for a home game in the first round. ... Meanwhile, CFP No. 13 Texas had to be hating Saturday. Even if the idle Longhorns (9-3) vault ahead of Alabama, they would still need a miracle to get in. They came into the season ranked No. 1 in the AP poll and had the nation's most hyped quarterback in Arch Manning. They have wins over top-15 teams Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Vanderbilt. They also lost at Florida — the Gators were bad this year — and got stomped by Georgia. They are staring at the likelihood of watching their archrival, Oklahoma, and two other teams from Texas play in the playoff while they sit it out.
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Alabama head coach Kalen Deboer speaks to an official during the first half of a Southeastern Conference championship NCAA college football game between Georgia and Alabama, Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
Georgia defensive back Daylen Everette (6) runs an intercepted ball against Alabama wide receiver Germie Bernard (5) during the first half of a Southeastern Conference championship NCAA college football game, Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
