I was just in Vegas and saw these rolling around. They seem to have a mix of robotaxis (like the ones pictured) and decked out Toyota Highlanders that look like Waymos but not as well "packaged", though in my personal experience I saw far more of the Highlanders than the custom robotaxis and all of them seemed to have a driver behind the wheel.
Vegas is an interesting place to launch IMO (and I believe they only operate in/around the strip). On the one hand all they really have to navigate is the strip which is just one giant straight road. But on the other hand most casinos on the strip have their entrances in the back and once you get off the strip and try to go up to one of these casinos it's a maze of roads. But that only speaks to the technical hurdles, I'm sure a big part of the calculus is that Vegas is very much a "novelty" kind of place and folks are much more likely to give it a shot when there.
Certain road hazards are a much bigger issue on the strip than most roads. Pedestrians frequently walk into traffic, and cars regularly stop illegally and swerve in front of other vehicles. It looks like the initial service area is tiny but if Zoox handles those cases well it's a solid technical achievement and bodes well for expansion.
Vegas is also good for many other reasons: year round good weather, lots of tourists in need of taxi services, too hot to walk, too drunk to drive, etc…
I remember once going on the way back a work trip on a whim, and regretting not checking that the weather was >100 degrees. That step outside was an oven.
It's also kind of far and inconvenient to get to. It's like the inverse of those shuttles that take you from the arrivals loop of the airport to the ass end of the casino loading dock of your hotel (and 10 other hotels. So, unlike Uber, not even remotely worth it).
Interestingly Vegas is the only place I will use a cab over Uber or Lyft or (preferably) Waymo. Using the Curb app to pay electronically you avoid most of the BS with cash and "their card machine being broken", and once you've done it a few times you know the actual correct routes between places.
What's not precise is road work closures, special event closures, detours due to event parking, random traffic patterns during various times of day and random signal availability for both gps and cellular due to massive buillding and parking garages. The randomness of it all is pretty crazy to me if they figure it out.
>> though in my personal experience I saw far more of the Highlanders than the custom robotaxis and all of them seemed to have a driver behind the wheel.
The robotaxis have a steering wheel? I thought they had campfire seating with 2 backward facing seats.
If by robotaxi you mean the vehicles used in the tesla test in Austin and now in the bay area, they are just regular model y with an emergency "stop so you don't kill me button" on the right side. They have a special version of the software that is unreleased. The current model Y's / "robotaxi" have all the regular hardware, including pedals and steering wheel and sensors. If you search, you can even find cases during the Austin Texas where the safety drier gets into the driver seat in a few situations.
We don't really know what a special robotaxi hardware would look like.
Vegas is an interesting place to launch IMO (and I believe they only operate in/around the strip). On the one hand all they really have to navigate is the strip which is just one giant straight road. But on the other hand most casinos on the strip have their entrances in the back and once you get off the strip and try to go up to one of these casinos it's a maze of roads. But that only speaks to the technical hurdles, I'm sure a big part of the calculus is that Vegas is very much a "novelty" kind of place and folks are much more likely to give it a shot when there.