The online retail giant Amazon, unlike Apple, for example, has not been one of the tech companies from the United States, which were said to have plans to develop their own electric cars. But now he is at least clearly stretching his feelers into a part of it: Amazon is taking over Zoox, a start-up for autonomous driving. Tesla CEO Elon Musk took this as an opportunity to once again clarify his not very high opinion of Amazon’s founder and CEO: “Jeff Bezos is a copycat, haha,” wrote the Tesla boss on a report about the takeover on Twitter .
Robot taxis like Tesla?
The Tesla CEO had written almost exactly the same thing a year ago when it became known that Amazon, like Musk’s rocket company SpaceX, wanted to launch a large number of small Internet satellites into space. It can be seen from his biography that he was upset about Bezos early on because the targeted SpaceX employee had wooed his own space company Blue Origin.
Because besides Tesla, many other companies are also working on autonomous driving, the allegation of imitation may be exaggerated in the current case. But Musk could be particularly annoyed that, according to observers, Bezos would like to implement an autonomous taxi service with the takeover of Zoox, as Tesla also plans for his electric cars. According to Musk’s statements, the autopilot functions for this could be fully developed by the end of this year, but would then still have to be validated in practice and, above all, approved by the authorities.
.@JeffBezos is a copy ???? haha https://t.co/plR7uupqBG
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 26, 2020
The acquisition of Zoox will cost Amazon a good $ 1.2 billion, according to the Financial Times. It is the largest car investment to date by the online retailer, which also has shares in the pickup producer Rivian and the autonomy startup Aurora. Analysts told the newspaper that in addition to robotic taxis, Amazon could also use self-driving electric cars as delivery vehicles. Unlike other providers, Zoox also develops the vehicle itself, which is supposed to drive autonomously with its technology, and had run into financial difficulties due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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