>Can someone explain why non car companies are buying self driving car tech?
Because warehouses and the freight terminal (truck terminal in the consumer goods case) that necessarily surrounds them have a need for things that can roll around autonomously while not colliding with things.
There are existing solutions for this but they're far behind the state of the art for self driving vehicles that aim to eventually be used on public roads and they have several weak points that make them less competitive in very dynamic warehouses (variable contents and throughput, as opposed to a warehouse that feeds a manufacturing operation which will have more fixed contents and less variable output) that mostly handle lightweight goods (which is part of why amazon uses so much human labor in its warehouses). I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon was trying to scoop up Zoox on the cheap for their own internal use. They already bought a warehouse automation company. The probably have a list of things they want to automate and figure that buying a company that already has competence in the space (even if they're not a front runner) is the best way to meet their needs.
Of course the delivery network serving the area surrounding the warehouse facility can also make use of self driving tech but self driving on public roads is a much harder and farther off problem and I don't think solving it is their primary goal for this purchase.
Because warehouses and the freight terminal (truck terminal in the consumer goods case) that necessarily surrounds them have a need for things that can roll around autonomously while not colliding with things.
There are existing solutions for this but they're far behind the state of the art for self driving vehicles that aim to eventually be used on public roads and they have several weak points that make them less competitive in very dynamic warehouses (variable contents and throughput, as opposed to a warehouse that feeds a manufacturing operation which will have more fixed contents and less variable output) that mostly handle lightweight goods (which is part of why amazon uses so much human labor in its warehouses). I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon was trying to scoop up Zoox on the cheap for their own internal use. They already bought a warehouse automation company. The probably have a list of things they want to automate and figure that buying a company that already has competence in the space (even if they're not a front runner) is the best way to meet their needs.
Of course the delivery network serving the area surrounding the warehouse facility can also make use of self driving tech but self driving on public roads is a much harder and farther off problem and I don't think solving it is their primary goal for this purchase.