HAYWARD, Calif. - Zoox, the robotaxi company owned by Amazon, has leased two warehouses totaling more than 350,000 square feet next to its vehicle factory here, more than doubling its footprint in the East Bay city as it works to build more of its driverless vehicles, The San Francisco Chronicle reported this week.
The buildings, at 25500 Clawiter Road just north of Highway 92, are owned by the investment manager PGIM. A JLL listing for the property, marketed as LogistiCenter at Highway 92, puts the two buildings at 232,633 and 121,020 square feet, or 353,653 square feet in all. JLL represented the landlord and CBRE represented Zoox, Hoodline reported, citing the Chronicle. The city has already issued Zoox a business license to operate at the warehouses, according to the Chronicle's review of Hayward records. The rent and the length of the lease were not disclosed.
A Zoox spokesperson told the Chronicle that the space would let the company scale its purpose-built robotaxi fleet and continue developing the vehicles in California. The spokesperson declined to say how the buildings would be used.
The warehouses sit beside the 220,000-square-foot production plant at 25810 Clawiter Road that Zoox opened in June 2025, on the former site of the Gillig bus factory. At the opening, Zoox said the plant would be able to assemble more than 10,000 robotaxis a year at full capacity, Reuters reported. The company also leases a 34,000-square-foot logistics and staging building at 25555 Clawiter Road, according to The Real Deal, and keeps its headquarters across San Francisco Bay in Foster City.
Paul Nguyen, Hayward's chief economic development officer, pointed to the deal as an example of the city attracting advanced manufacturing, Hoodline reported. He said companies choosing a site weigh access to heavy power, supply chains and workers, along with how quickly they can get to market.
The lease follows a federal decision that allows Zoox to put its vehicle on the road in volume. On July 31, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration granted Zoox a temporary exemption from parts of the federal motor vehicle safety standards for its robotaxi, which has no steering wheel or pedals and seats four passengers facing one another. The exemption covers up to 2,500 vehicles in each 12-month period through July 31, 2028, according to the Federal Register. Zoox began charging fares on the Las Vegas Strip in August.
California is a different matter. Zoox carries riders in San Francisco free of charge through a sign-up program it calls Zoox Explorers, and state regulators have so far given it only pilot permits that do not allow it to collect fares, Hoodline reported, citing California Public Utilities Commission records.
The expansion comes as Zoox competes with Alphabet's Waymo, which leads the American robotaxi market and recently leased 120,000 square feet of office space at One Market Plaza in San Francisco's Financial District, The Real Deal reported. Amazon bought Zoox in 2020 for more than $1 billion.
The deal is also among the larger recent commitments in Hayward's industrial market. The Hayward submarket recorded 618,462 square feet of industrial leasing in the third quarter, the second-highest total in the region, according to the brokerage Kidder Mathews, The Real Deal reported.
Zoox did not say how many robotaxis it has built at the Hayward plant so far, or how many more it expects to produce once the new buildings are in use.
