Hyundai’s autonomous vehicle joint venture with Aptiv names it Motional. The company plans to test fully driverless vehicles for ride-hailing services later this year.
The name is meant to evoke the “motion” of transportation and the “emotion” of the decision to get somewhere safely.
This joint venture was first announced in March this year. It was when Hyundai said it would spend $1.6 billion to catch up to its rivals.
Aptiv, a self-driving technology company owns 50 percent of the venture. It is an offshoot of global auto parts supplier, Delphi.
Karl Iagnemma was the former CEO of self-driving startup NuTonomy that was acquired by Delphi in 2017. He is now president and CEO of Motional.
Vehicles that are operating in Las Vegas, Singapore, and Seoul, will soon be rebranded with the “Motional” brand, Iagnemma said.
He contends that the Motional team was hard at work on getting cars to drive themselves for a long time. That was through NuTonomy, and then Delphi, and then Aptiv, and now Motional.
Its engineers were responsible for the world’s first robotaxi pilot in Singapore. It also led the first cross-country New York-to-San Francisco autonomous trip.
In the last two years, Aptiv’s fleet of safety-drivers monitored autonomous taxis in Las Vegas. That was in partnership with Lyft and they had completed over 100,000 trips.
The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown a gear in the wrench of many autonomous vehicle projects. For months, public testing in the US and other countries was halted.
South Korea Government Supports Hyundai
Now, experts believe the virus will make shared autonomous vehicles a more difficult sell for hygiene-conscious consumers. The collapse of Uber and Lyft’s business in the US seems to forewarn the difficulty autonomous vehicle developers will face.
But Iagnemma sees it differently, citing a survey that Motional recently conducted. It found one in five people was more interested in autonomous vehicles as a result of the pandemic.
He said that what they’re doing feels more important and more relevant than ever.
Hyundai isn’t new to self-driving cars. In 2019, it worked with a Chinese company called Pony.ai to test self-driving cars as taxis in Irvine, California.
With a safety driver and an engineer riding in the driver and passenger seats, the cars were not fully driverless.
The joint venture is a more significant financial contribution from the automaker. Hyundai and Kia Motors will collectively contribute $1.6 billion in cash. They will also spend $400 million in research and development resources and others, valuing the joint venture at $4 billion.
Unlike some of its competitors, Hyundai received financial support from the government of South Korea. This was to boost its efforts in both autonomous and electric vehicle development.
South Korea plans to spend 1.7 trillion won or $1.4 trillion between 2021 and 2027 on self-driving technology. Hyundai agreed to launch a fully autonomous fleet of vehicles for customers by 2024, and the general public by 2027.
COMMENTS