Motional, The $ 4 billion Aptiv-Hyundai joint venture to commercialize self-driving vehicles is preparing to launch fully driverless vehicles on public roads in Las Vegas after receiving approval from the state of Nevada.
The company's president and CEO, Karl Iagnemma, announced in a blog post Tuesday that the state has given permission to test its autonomous vehicles without a human safety driver behind the wheel.
That doesn't mean these vehicles will hit the streets of Las Vegas tomorrow. Iagnemma, whose startup AV nuTonomy was acquired by Aptiv in 2017 and has since evolved into the Hyundai Motional joint venture, he said the company will spend the next few months completing what it describes as a "rigorous, self-imposed period of testing and evaluation." That period of testing and evaluation, which is already underway, included studying the performance and safety of its vehicles on public and private roads. Based on that timeline, driverless tests on public roads will begin in early 2021.
Iagnemma also noted that Motional was working with one of the "most respected safety assessors in the world". The company did not name the safety assessor, but told ProWellTech that more details on the safety and progress of the assessment would be revealed in the coming weeks.
Motional is no stranger to Las Vegas. As an Aptiv Autonomous Mobility Group, the company has spent years testing its autonomous vehicles (with a human backup driver behind the wheel) in the city. The company launched a one-week program with Lyft in January 2018 to test a robotaxi service during CES, the major technology conference. That temporary experiment, which has always included a human safety driver, was extended and still exists today. As of February 2020, the program had provided more than 100,000 paid self-driving rides in Aptiv's self-driving vehicles via the Lyft app.
Aptiv's investment in Las Vegas has grown as the number of motorcyclists has grown. The company opened a 130,000-square-foot technical center in the city in December 2018 to house its fleet of autonomous vehicles, as well as a team of engineers dedicated to software and hardware systems research and development, validation and mapping.
The fully driverless test will be separated from the company's self-driving fleet operating on the Lyft network in Las Vegas, according to Iagnemma.
Since its joint venture with Hyundai, the new Motional company is stepping up its efforts in Las Vegas and other US cities such as Pittsburgh and international locations, including Singapore and South Korea. The goal, says Iagnemma, is to create a AV technology capable of navigating a wide range of international road environments, including left and right hand driving, blazing sun and pouring rain, highways and city streets, roundabouts and uncontrolled intersections
What is unclear is where these driverless vehicles will work and when Morional could make them accessible to the public. If Motional follows Waymo's lead, which has begun rolling out a driverless service in the Phoenix area, the process will be slow and likely to be in testing for months.
Another unknown is whether Motional will partner with Lyft or another company to run a driverless service. Last month, Motional and the on-demand shuttle startup Via announced plans to launch a shared robotic taxi service for the public in a U.S. city in the first half of 2021. The companies said at the time that the goal is to develop a shared-on-demand robotaxi "project" and find out how these driverless vehicles can be integrated into mass transit. The partnership with Via will begin with autonomous vehicles with a human safety driver behind the wheel.
Details about this partnership and the service were scarce. Motional and Via did not identify the city, but did not provide information on the geographic scope of the service or the number or type of vehicles that would be used. The companies said the service will be launched in one of the US cities where Motional already operates, narrowing the possible list to Boston, Pittsburgh, Las Vegas and Santa Monica.
