Zheng Gao, former Director of Engineering, Autopilot Hardware and Product Design-Electronics at EV giant Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA), has joined Amazon.com Inc.'s (NASDAQ:AMZN) robotaxi unit Zoox.

What Happened: Zoox announced Gao's appointment in a post on LinkedIn. Gao will join Zoox as Director of Hardware Engineering.

"Zheng spent the past eight years of his career at Tesla, where he led autopilot hardware design. Before Tesla, Zheng spent over nine years at Apple leading the Connector and Input Device Product Design teams. With over 100 U.S. patents, Zheng is experienced in developing high-volume and high-reliability hardware," Zoox wrote in its welcome post.

Gao, however, has yet to update his new position on Linkedin.

Earlier this week, Zoox also said that it has roped in Nelson Pedreiro as Senior Vice President of Hardware. Pedreiro was previously Chief engineer at Lockheed Martin.

Musk Vs. Levinson: Late in October, Zoox co-founder Jesse Levinson said that the company will launch its custom-built robotaxi with no pedals or steering wheel in San Francisco and Las Vegas in the coming weeks. The company will start taking members of the public for rides in the vehicle starting next year, he added.

Levinson then also dismissed the possibility of Tesla deploying autonomous vehicles without safety drivers in California next year, alleging that the EV giant lacks a technology that works.

Tesla is faced with a lot of regulatory hurdles that they haven't even started trying to climb yet, Levinson said at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 event in San Francisco. But the fundamental problem, he said, is that Tesla doesn't have a "technology that worked."

"By works, I want to differentiate between a driver assistance system that drives most the time except when it doesn't and then you have to take over versus a system that's so reliable and robust that you don't need a person in it," Levinson said.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk subsequently hit back at Levinson saying Zoox would have been dead if it hadn't got acquired by Amazon in 2020.

Tesla's Robotaxi Plans: Tesla is looking to start a robotaxi service, placing it as a direct competitor to Zoox.

During the company's third-quarter earnings call earlier this month, Musk said that the company expects to start a ride-hail service in Texas and California starting next year, subject to regulatory approval.

However, the vehicles might not all operate as driverless robotaxis but with a driver as some states demand it until the company touches certain milestones in terms of miles and hours driven, the company then said.

However, Musk expressed confidence about the company operating driverless paid rides sometime next year.

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