Amazon's autonomous taxi unit, Zoox, announced on Wednesday that it plans to begin testing its self-driving vehicles in Austin, Texas, and Miami. This will be its first trial outside the Western United States.
Zoox will deploy a modified fleet of Toyota Highlander vehicles equipped with human safety drivers within a small area near the commercial and entertainment districts of these two cities.
In California and Nevada, Zoox has been testing its self-designed autonomous vehicles that have no steering wheel or pedals and can accommodate four passengers, seated face-to-face.
The announcement comes as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is investigating 500 Zoox vehicles equipped with autonomous driving systems, following two reported accidents.
Austin and Miami will become the fourth and fifth public testing locations for Zoox, which previously launched operations in San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Seattle.
Zoox stated that it has not yet offered public rides in Austin and Miami but is exploring commercial operations in multiple cities after initial rollouts in its primary target markets, Las Vegas and San Francisco.
Like Zoox, autonomous taxi companies such as General Motors' Cruise and Alphabet's Waymo are also under investigation by the NHTSA due to the performance of their self-driving cars.
Cruise announced on Monday that it had paused operations following an incident involving its autonomous taxi in San Francisco last October but has since resumed operations in Dallas, Texas, with a small fleet of manually driven vehicles.
