Strategic cooperation between Hyundai and Avride is supposed to bring autonomous robotaxis onto the streets and redesign the future of mobility.
Hyundai Motor Company And Avride have made an agreement on the joint development of autonomous vehicles. The focus is on technologies for robotaxis, whereby other applications such as autonomous delivery services are to be examined with sidewalk delivery robots.
As part of the partnership, Avride will expand its fleet of Hyundai Ioniq 5 vehicles. These are mounted in the new Hyundai factory in Georgia and equipped with Avrideʼ’s autonomous technology. The vehicles are to be introduced in Dallas as part of a robotaxi service this year, which will only be accessible via the Uber app.
This agreement is part of several partnerships that the Austin -based startup Avride closed last year. It also shows how Hyundai goes beyond its own internal development efforts. The AV market leader only had in October 2024 Waymo concluded a contract with Hyundai to integrate the IONIQ 5 EV into its robotaxi network.
Hyundai is already the main investor from Motional, a startup for autonomous driving in 2019 through a 4 billion dollar-Jooint venture Apiv was founded. Motional continues to work on the level 4 autonomy, in which the system takes over the entire vehicle navigation without human interventions.
However, Motional had to fight with challenges after APTIV did not do any further capital investments. Hyundai increased his commitment by a further $ 1 billion, which led to a restructuring at Motional, including layoffs and the resignation of the CEO.
Avride emphasizes that cooperation with Hyundai is not a substitute for motional, but is similar to the agreement with Waymo. CEO DMITRY Polishchuk explained that the new agreement would help you to scale your company significantly, with plans to expand your fleet to up to 100 autonomous Ioniq 5 by 2025. Incidentally, Avride is an offshoot of the Russian company Yandex.
Chang Song, President of the Advanced Vehicle Platform Division at Hyundai, emphasized that the company is actively driving its business with autonomous vehicles and expanding cooperation with leading technology companies such as Avride in order to shape the future of mobility together.