Santa Monica May Rent Amazon's Zoox Parking for Up to 150 Robotaxis
The city could earn $500,000 a year letting Zoox park robotaxis at its library garage — even as it keeps fighting Waymo in court over robotaxi charging noise.
What happened: Santa Monica's City Council voted 6-0 Tuesday to let staff keep negotiating a deal with Zoox, Amazon's self-driving car unit, to store and stage up to 150 robotaxis in city-owned parking structures. The main site under discussion is the underground level and surface lot of the Main Library garage, with a Kiss-and-Ride lot near the Downtown Expo station as a possible short-term backup. City Manager Oliver Chi called it a pilot that could run up to a year and said Zoox would pay per parking space, generating roughly $500,000 or more annually. Two council members recused themselves, one over Amazon stock holdings, another over a conflict tied to Metropolis, the company helping broker the deal.
Why it matters: This is happening while Santa Monica is locked in a lawsuit with Waymo over overnight robotaxi charging at two lots, where neighbors complained about beeping, humming, bright lights and late-night noise. A judge sided with the city in July, then paused that ruling on appeal in August, so Waymo is still operating there. City officials say keeping robotaxis out of residential streets has become a priority, and the Zoox arrangement is being pitched as a way to do that on the city's own terms, collecting revenue instead of fighting a nuisance case.
How it works, plainly: Under the proposed license, Zoox would only park and stage vehicles at the library garage, not charge them. The company is setting up a separate charging site elsewhere. The library structure has three parking levels but only one sees regular use, and a third has been shut down entirely, so the city is offering idle capacity rather than building anything new. The agreement would follow the city's standard parking-license rules and include language shielding Santa Monica from liability if a Zoox vehicle is involved in an incident on site.
The rollout: Nothing is final: staff are still confirming whether the library garage meets Zoox's technical needs, and the structure normally closes at night, so the city would need extra staffing to manage robotaxis while it's open for Zoox. Zoox is already running a pilot in San Francisco and is folding Santa Monica into a broader Los Angeles-area robotaxi rollout. Whether parking-only staging avoids the kind of noise complaints that triggered the Waymo lawsuit remains untested.