*

Zoox aims for paid service with regulatory clearances in

coming

months

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Zoox plans expansion to San Francisco, Miami, Austin,

Atlanta,

Los Angeles

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Zoox's test loop ride in Las Vegas has attracted thousands

of

weekly riders - exec

By Abhirup Roy and Akash Sriram

Sept 10 (Reuters) - Amazon.com ( AMZN )-owned Zoox on

Wednesday began offering robotaxi rides to the public for free

on and around the Las Vegas Strip as it waits for state approval

to collect fares and compete with Alphabet's Waymo and

Tesla.

Waymo has a robotaxi service ferrying paying passengers in many

U.S. cities, and Tesla has a limited number of robotaxis picking

up paying customers in Austin, Texas.

But Zoox looks and feels very different from its rivals,

using a purpose-built vehicle that resembles a toaster oven on

wheels. There are no manual controls such as a steering wheel or

pedals, and passengers sit facing each other.

"This is a very differentiating experience that you want

people to sort of get to understand and know the robotaxi, get

used to it, and give us feedback too," Zoox Chief Executive

Aicha Evans told Reuters. "That's good for the community, that's

good for the riders, and that's good for Zoox."

Commercializing robotaxis has been harder than promised, with

tight regulations, public protests, federal investigations and

high investments forcing many fledgling robotaxi ventures to

shut down. Amazon ( AMZN ) bought Zoox for $1.3 billion in 2020 and is

one of the few contestants still in the autonomous vehicle race,

which, if successful, could generate large returns.

Zoox is seeking regulatory clearances for the paid service

that it expects to start in the next few months. The vehicles

will mostly run on their own with remote human assistance

available only when the vehicle requests help.

TEST RIDE

Over the past month, Zoox has been operating a test loop

ride out of a Las Vegas casino. "We've actually been getting

thousands of riders every week just from this one location,

which actually quite exceeded our expectations," Chief

Technology Officer Jesse Levinson told Reuters.

The company has about 50 purpose-built vehicles in its

fleet, a majority of which are in Las Vegas.

Zoox will "very soon" expand the service to San Francisco,

where it has been testing for months and is now adding riders to

a wait list, the executives said. Expansion to Miami, Austin,

Texas; Atlanta and Los Angeles will follow later this year and

next year, they said.

Tesla has started a ride-hailing service in the San Francisco

Bay Area with a safety driver who uses its self-driving

technology. Waymo, with its roughly 2,000-vehicle fleet,

operates in the Bay Area, along with parts of Los Angeles,

Phoenix, Austin and Atlanta.

Traditional ride-hailing company Uber ( UBER ) is also fast

emerging as a competitor, signing multiple deals to add

autonomous vehicles to its network.