President Donald Trump’s administration has cleared the way for Zoox, the autonomous vehicle subsidiary of Amazon, to demonstrate self-driving cars that lack traditional driving controls like steering wheels.
U.S. auto safety regulators granted an exemption to federal vehicle safety standards for purpose-built driverless cars made by Zoox, the Transportation Department said in a statement on Wednesday. The decision follows a lengthy period of back-and-forth between the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the self-driving car developer, which announced its driverless car designed without steering wheels or brake pedals in 2022.
NHTSA said all the self-driving vehicles made by Zoox operating on public roads are doing so under the new exemption. It’s unclear how many of those cars are in operation.
The decision is a boost for Zoox, which in June opened a robotaxi production facility in California where it plans to eventually churn out 10,000 purpose-built robotaxis a year. The Amazon-owned company’s robotaxi is akin to a shuttle and has no steering wheel or pedals, with four inward-facing seats.
Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
U.S. auto safety standards typically require vehicles to have human controls. That’s created regulatory headaches for companies including Zoox, General Motors and Tesla which have designed self-driving cars without those features.
NHTSA has taken steps this year to remove barriers for self-driving cars, something that Tesla CEO Elon Musk had advocated for before his stint in the Trump administration.
The agency granted Zoox’s exemption under a policy updated earlier this year to allow domestically produced autonomous vehicles to qualify for exemptions previously offered only to imports.
The agency in June also said it would update a separate exemption authority to speed the review process for self-driving car exemptions, a move also intended to boost deployment.