| Hey, it's Josh. This was supposed to be Zoox's year, and it has been. Sort of. Way back in 2018 my colleague Ashlee Vance profiled the founders of the startup, which had raised hundreds of millions of dollars to put self-driving robotaxis on public roads by 2020. It was a concept that seemed tantalizingly possible back then—its competitors included Alphabet Inc., General Motors Co., Tesla Inc., Apple Inc. and Daimler AG. But Zoox's co-founder, Tim Kentley-Klay, said all of them were thinking too small. If everything went according to Zoox's grand plan, Kentley-Klay said: "They're f---ed." Everything did not work out as planned. Kentley-Klay was pushed out of Zoox a month later. The year 2020 is here and it's brought plenty of, um, amazing things, but a Zoox robotaxi is not one of them. And last week Amazon.com Inc. announced it was purchasing the startup. The price was reported to be about one-third of its highest previous valuation of $3.2 billion. Amazon said in a statement that Zoox would operate independently and continue to pursue the robotaxis. But of course the logical focus of an autonomous vehicle unit owned by Amazon is its massive logistics operation. So it goes for the self-driving car industry. The idea of autonomous passenger cars has captured the imagination in a way that few emerging technologies can. Over the past several years, prototypes and limited tests in certain conditions got good enough that it was easy to imagine general-use vehicles going mainstream relatively soon—an impression that was validated by the unimaginable sums of money that the technology and automotive industries poured into self-driving car projects. For a while, Zoox slid easily into the protagonist's role. Kentley-Klay cultivated the kind of snake-oil-salesman-whose-stuff-actually-works persona that Silicon Valley can't resist. He did research on the industry by posing as a documentary filmmaker and picking the brains of its leading thinkers by "interviewing" them. He waxed philosophical about transforming cities and partnered with the son of the chairman of Apple Inc. to start a company that would do it. (That's Jesse Levinson, Zoox's co-founder and chief technology officer, who Amazon said will stay with the company after the acquisition.) It would have been a great backstory had Zoox actually conquered the world. But self-driving cars have proven to be a technology that—unlike social media—doesn't particularly favor disruptive startups. The immense capital costs and deadening development cycles are perfect for large companies who can wait out the lean times. Even mid-tier players like Uber Technologies Inc. are pulling back. Amazon was relatively late to the game, but has begun collecting transportation assets. It has recently invested in autonomous vehicle startups Aurora Innovation Inc. and Rivian Automotive. Its involvement illustrates not just what types of companies will stick around to wait out the development of self-driving vehicles, but what those vehicles will be good for. While the general public's interest has always skewed toward cars you can ride in, there are far better business cases for focusing on less sexy applications, like trucking and delivery. Amazon has both the money that allows it to be patient with the new technology and a business ideally positioned to benefit from it. Zoox never did take over the world, but its acquisition might be good news for the advancement of self-driving tech. The bad news is that robotaxis feel that much further away. —Joshua Brustein | 
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