What happened
Amazon (AMZN -0.09%), a company that devotes piles of capital and much collective brainpower to improving its business through technology, saw its shares rise on some good news in that sphere. It reported the successful test of a self-driving vehicle, and this heartened investors enough for them to send the share price 2% higher on Monday.
So what
The good news came from Amazon's Zoox self-driving tech unit, which said that it successfully road-tested one of its robotaxis. This occurred on Saturday, according to the Amazon unit, with the ride spanning two Zoox buildings in Foster City (a municipality near San Francisco). Several Zoox employees were the passengers on the journey.
The live human test drive follows what Zoox claims has been "rigorous" testing on private roads. Zoox aims to operate a free-of-charge employee shuttle service as its first official rollout.
This is the first step toward wider commercialization. Amazon envisions that the Zoox vehicles will operate as robotaxis in many different markets.
Now what
Investors are always eager to see their companies develop new revenue streams. If Amazon/Zoox can keep up the pace of development with their self-driving craft, they stand a decent chance of scoring first-mover advantage in the robotaxi segment.
Caution is warranted here, though. First of all, it's extremely early in the history of autonomous vehicles, and much progress remains to be made in the technology. Second, a host of other tech companies and automakers are also racing to develop self-driving capability, and Amazon's leading position is by no means secure. These dynamics could explain the market's guardedly optimistic reaction to the Zoox news.
