Cannon-Brookes says Zoox “robot” cars will be on the road within two years

The Driven

Australian tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes says he expects to see autonomous “robot cars” on the road within two years, in what he says will be a massive change in road transportation.

Cannon-Brookes, through his private investment company Grok Ventures, (which has also backed the project to build the world’s biggest solar farm and battery in the Northern Territory) is a major investor in the US-based self-driving start-up Zoox, and led a major funding round earlier this year.

Zoox has reportedly raised more than $1 billion and is developing its own autonomous software, competing with the likes of Alphabet’s Waymo , GM’s Cruise and Elon Musk’s Tesla.

Not much is known about Zoox and the details of its technology, but the company’s web-site promises it is approaching driving autonomously “in ways that no one else has shown.”

“We are driving in cities and on highways. Making unprotected lefts and rights on red. Yielding to pedestrians and passing double parked vehicles,” it says.

“We are applying the latest in automotive, robotics and renewable energy to design a symmetrical, bidirectional, zero-emissions vehicle from the ground up to solve the unique challenges of autonomous mobility.”

To read the full story on RenewEconomy’s electric vehicle dedicated site, The Driven, click here…