March 14 (Reuters) - Amazon.com's ( AMZN ) self-driving

car unit, Zoox, is seeking to stay abreast of rival Waymo by

expanding its vehicles' testing in California and Nevada to

include a wider area, higher speeds and nighttime driving.

The changes, announced on Thursday, apply to Zoox's fleet of

vehicles that it designed and built itself. Those resemble

toaster ovens on wheels and lack manual controls inside, like

steering wheels, pedals and gear shifters. Zoox also operates

retrofitted self-driving Toyota Highlanders in Seattle, Las

Vegas, San Francisco and Foster City, California.

The moves are modest compared with Alphabet's

Waymo, which this week announced a plan to begin a taxi service

in Los Angeles, on top of the existing markets of San Francisco

and Phoenix, where it already ferries passengers in its

retrofitted autonomous Jaguars.

Zoox said it will free up its specially designed vehicles to

drive at speeds up to 45 miles per hour (72 kph), from 35 mph.

It also expanded the Las Vegas area in which the cars can travel

to five miles from one mile, it said in a statement. "Driving in

these larger areas exposes our robotaxis to the busiest

conditions they've ever encountered," the company said.

The Zoox vehicles will also drive in light rain and at

night, the company said, critical for gathering additional data.

Like rivals, Zoox is hoping to one day replace human drivers

with full self-driving vehicles that technologists say are safer

and more reliable because they do not succumb to human error.

Zoox has not given a timeline for when it thinks its fully

autonomous vehicles will be ubiquitous.

Rival General Motors' ( GM ) Cruise halted testing of its

robotaxis last year after regulators alleged executives had

withheld evidence from an accident in San Francisco in which a

Cruise vehicle struck and dragged a woman about 20 feet (6.1

m)after she was hit by a human-driven car.

Amazon ( AMZN ) bought Zoox in 2020 for more than $1 billion, leading

to speculation it could eventually use the cars as delivery

vehicles, sparing it the cost of paying for drivers. Zoox has

not made any announcements about its plans beyond as robotaxis.