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Self-Driving Cars Get Help from Humans Miles Away

Zoox, a self-driving car company owned by Amazon, is deploying robot taxis without steering wheels, driver seats or drivers. But like all other self-driving cars, they still need help from humans.

The illusion of complete autonomy helped to draw attention to their technology and encourage venture capitalists to invest the billions of dollars needed to build increasingly effective autonomous vehicles. “It may be cheaper just to pay a driver to sit in the car and drive it,” said Thomas W. Malone, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Collective Intelligence. While those companies use traditional cars retrofitted for self-driving, Zoox is testing a new kind of vehicle in Foster City, just south of San Francisco, and in Las Vegas, not far from the Strip.

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