Partnership to introduce Hyundai driverless vehicles by 2021

A partnership to bring self-driving Hyundai vehicles to market by 2021 has been announced between the automaker and technology firm Aurora.

It will incorporate Aurora’s self-driving technology into Hyundai vehicles starting with models custom-developed and launched in test projects and pilot smart cities. Longer term, Hyundai and Aurora will work to commercialise self-driving vehicles worldwide.

Hyundai’s new-generation fuel-cell vehicle will be the first test model under the partnership, the vehicle debuting at the CES 2018 technology show on January 9-12 (press days January 7-8) in Las Vegas.

To start, the partnership will focus on the ongoing development of hardware and software for automated and autonomous driving and the back-end data services required for Level 4 automation (operating without human input or oversight under select conditions). The goal is to deploy autonomous driving quickly, broadly and safely.

“We know the future of transportation is autonomous, and autonomous driving technology needs to be proven in the real-world to accelerate deployment in a safe and scalable manner,” Hyundai Motor vice-chairman Dr Woong Chul Yang says.

For nearly 50 years, Hyundai has been a leader in vehicle design, safety and manufacturing, catapulting the company to become one of the world’s largest vehicle manufacturers together with its Kia Motors Corporation affiliate.

For the past two decades, Aurora’s founders have spearheaded the self-driving revolution, building teams and pioneering modern machine learning techniques.

Hyundai first began testing autonomous vehicles on Nevada roads in the USA in 2015.
At the 2017 CES show, Hyundai advanced its trials in urban environments, demonstrating self-driving technologies with its autonomous Ioniq models.