Hyundai and Motional Made a Robotaxi

Motional, a global leader in driverless technology, and Hyundai Motor Group launched IONIQ 5-based robotaxi Motional’s next-generation robotaxi.

They added LIDAR and other sensors to all-electric Hyundai IONIQ 5. The IONIQ 5 robotaxi is an SAE Level 4 autonomous vehicle that can safely operate without a driver. It’s a zero tailpipe-emissions robotaxi and represents the convergence of the two most transformative technologies in mobility: electrification and autonomy. The fusion of these technologies can make transportation smarter, safer, and more sustainable.

4 thoughts on “Hyundai and Motional Made a Robotaxi”

  1. Meh. Tesla is till level 2 autonomy. Others that claim level 3 or 4 are just relying on marketing. They have few vehicles in testing and so on or only 1 feature is level 4 so level 3 or 4 is just misleading. We are stuck at lvl 2 and will be for quite some time.

    I doubt we will get hands off the steering wheel any time soon. Why? Autopilot is not good enough for all exceptions and because legal reasons. 1 lawsuit can kill the company or damage it a lot. So to protect against that they will keep mandatory hands on the steering wheel, they can blame any autopilot problem or accident on the driver. He was supposed to react in time, it is his fault not autopilot,… Shifting legal responsibility,… Autopilot is just to assist,….

  2. Where did this come from? I’ve been operating under the impression Tesla is the leader in Full Self Driving. Then Hyundai shows up out of the blue with an autonomous vehicle which is level 4. I realize they may have fancier sensors (LIDAR, radar) and a more detailed map of a single city, but does that require less code? And less sophisticated code? Is their code more detailed than Tesla FSD V11? Or have they conquered end-to-end neural net sooner and better than Tesla? Some answers please.
    Thank you Brian for all you do.

  3. An honest question: exactly how is this different from Waymo and Cruise? It is only available in Las Vegas.

    “Its fully driverless public service will be operated in a limited area with a small number of vehicles. It will then expand the operating area and vehicle volume in coming years”, Motional said.

    Waymo, Cruise now open to public in SF: Here’s how to take a ride
    WebThursday, August 10, 2023. ABC7 News reporter Lyanne Melendez tried out one of Waymo’s self-driving vehicle

  4. It is the edge cases where all this “autonomy” reliably fails. Another shocking surprise is software defects (delivered, after all the QA): given the usual range of 0.1~0.2 defects per 1000 lines of code, and this thing having at least 100M lines in its safety-critical software, there are at least 10~20K software defects no one even knows about. Better to ride a horse (as shown in this video) – it is truly autonomous, has no software defects (QA done by nature) and a survival instinct. Second choice is a manned taxi – some reasoning defects occur, less strong survival instinct, but even more autonomous (edge cases are dealt with with prejudice).

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