DRIVE WITH EYES CLOSED
Hyundai announces a partnership that should deliver self-driving car technology to its cars by the 2021 model year.
Hyundai and Aurora, a leader in autonomous vehicle technology, have announced a strategic partnership to bring selfdriving Hyundai vehicles to market by 2021.
This partnership will incorporate Aurora’s self-driving technology into Hyundai vehicles starting with models custom-developed and launched in test programs and pilot cities.
Over the longer term, Hyundai and Aurora will work to commercialize self-driving vehicles worldwide.
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.
Level 4 autonomous vehicles defined by SAE can operate without human input or oversight under select conditions. The goal of the partnership is to deploy autonomous driving quickly, broadly and safely.
Hyundai’s latest new-generation fuel-cell vehicle, which made its official global debut at CES 2018 this week, will become the first model to be utilized in the test processes starting this year.
The fuel-cell powertrain will offer an ideal platform to implement autonomous driving technologies, which requires a massive amount of power to support the large amount of data communication as well as the operation of hardware such as sensors. A hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicle will be able to provide a stable electric power supply without concerns about driving range.