San Francisco is inching closer to a future where you hail a ride from a machine that doesn't know your name, doesn't want a tip, and definitely won't talk your ear off about crypto. Zoox — Amazon's self-driving vehicle subsidiary — is expanding its robotaxi service into the Marina, North Beach, and Chinatown, and for the first time, it's opening rides up to the general public.

Sort of.

Here's the catch: unless you work at Zoox, have a friend who does, or manage to claw your way off a waitlist, you're still watching this particular future from the sidewalk. The "public launch" is more of a soft friends-and-family situation with extra steps.

That said, credit where it's due — Zoox is actually moving. While Waymo has had a head start locking down SF streets, Zoox is finally putting its distinctive boxy, bidirectional vehicles into neighborhoods where real people actually live and eat and stumble home at 2 a.m. The Marina, North Beach, and Chinatown aren't just scenic — they're genuinely high-demand corridors that could benefit from more transit options, especially as Muni continues its proud tradition of being aggressively mediocre.

The bigger question is whether San Francisco will manage this expansion without tying it up in the kind of regulatory knots that have made this city a cautionary tale for tech deployment. We've already seen the CPUC and city agencies play tug-of-war with Waymo and Cruise — one of whom is no longer operating here, for reasons that are complicated.

For now, Zoox represents genuine competition in the autonomous vehicle space, which is good for consumers and good for the city — assuming regulators let it breathe and the company doesn't hand them a reason not to.

Get on the waitlist. Or know someone. That's San Francisco for you.