Last year, Hyundai Motor Group and Aptiv formed a $4 billion self-driving joint venture (JV) to develop Level 4 and Level 5 autonomous vehicles. That JV has now been named Motional — the combination of the words motion and emotion — and it will begin testing driverless systems this year with the goal of having a production-ready autonomous driving platform for robotaxi providers, fleet operators and autonomous OEMs by 2022.
"Motional is a strong name that will signify to consumers they are riding in a driverless vehicle that is safe for passengers, cities and the environment," said Kevin Clark, president and CEO of Aptiv. "As Motional works to transform mobility with its production-ready autonomous driving system, Aptiv will help pave the way for self-driving vehicles with our advanced ADAS platform that saves lives today and builds trust in highly-automated vehicles."
The team behind Motional was the first to make a cross-country drive in a fully autonomous vehicle and launched a robotaxi pilot project in Singapore in 2016. The team is also responsible for launching what it claims is the most-established public robotaxi fleet, which is in Las Vegas and was launched during CES 2018. Aptiv expanded the project in Las Vegas at this year’s CES to include rides from the city’s McCarran International Airport for CES passengers.
To date, the Motional team has provided more than 100,000 rides, with 98% of riders rating the experience favorably, the company said.
The company will be based out of Boston with development teams in Pittsburgh, Las Vegas, Santa Monica, Singapore and Seoul, which will serve as a hub for testing.
