Amazon leads the way in self-driving vehicle patents

According to the Japanese agency Nikkeithe American corporation Amazon has become the leader in the number of patents filed for unmanned vehicles among the entire “big five” American technology companies – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Meta (recognized as extremist in the Russian Federation and banned).

Over the past twenty years, the US Patent Office has received the most patent filings from Amazon and its affiliates. It is reported that Amazon has gained a leading position in the past few years, while Google (now Alphabet) was the leader in the number of patents related to unmanned vehicles. Amazon managed to pull ahead in large part due to the purchase in 2020 for $ 1.2 billion of one of the most promising startups in the field of unmanned vehicles – the company Zoox, founded back in 2014. Mid-February Zoox reported about the start of testing their unmanned taxis on public roads. In July last year, California authorities issued a road test permit for the Zoox robot taxi. The company says the results of tests in laboratories and on special tracks, during which its unmanned taxis drove a total of about 1 million miles (1.6 million km), were presented to regulators.

Evgeniy Khvostik