Aptiv. It’s a name you should familiarize yourself with. Currently, it’s slowly growing its self-driving vehicle program. In fact, its one of the most popular ride-sharing service and global technology companies, and earlier in 2019 they made a deal with ride-hailing provider Lyft. Aptiv currently has 30 BMW 5-series cars with self-driving technology on board driving around Las Vegas, and through this partnership, over 50,000 rides have been completed safely in Las Vegas with modified BMW 5-series vehicles. So how does a growing tech giant get a leg up? Like many automakers (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Aurora Innovation for instance), the Hyundai Motor Group saw potential with Aptiv, and now the industry’s most innovative vehicle technology provider is partnered up with one of the world’s largest vehicle manufacturers.

The new joint venture between the Hyundai Motor Group and Aptiv of course also means good news for Kia Motors, also working towards cutting-edge technology. During the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show, Kia Motors was one automaker that took a chance to shine. Along with their Real-time Emotion Adaptive Driving (R.E.A.D.) system that monitors driver mood and V-Touch technology that allows drivers to control features with hand gestures, the Hyundai Motor Group and Kia Motors also introduced self-driving vehicle-friendly parking garages with automated charging. With all of this already in the mix, the Hyundai Motor Group and Aptiv will be working together to design, develop, and commercialize SAE Level 4 and 5 autonomous technologies.

“The new joint venture marks the start of a journey with Aptiv toward our common goal of commercializing autonomous driving…The combined capabilities of Aptiv, a leading global technology company, and our Group, a global OEM, will create invaluable synergy to lead the autonomous driving landscape.” - Euisun Chung, Executive Vice Chairman, Hyundai Motor Group

We talked about what Aptiv has done recently, but the company has an industry-leading portfolio of advanced mobility solutions. Aptiv has collected data on a variety of systems for building better self-driving vehicles - perception systems, software algorithms, compute platforms, and data and power distribution – and in 2015, they became the first company to conduct a coast-to-coast automated drive in the United States. The company has grown to have commercial autonomous vehicles on a global scale, operating more than 100 autonomous vehicles on multiple continents, and as we said, they’re also currently driving around Las Vegas.

Back in 2015, the Hyundai Motor Group received a license to from the state of Nevada to test autonomous vehicles on public roads in the U.S and has been doing so since 2015. Quickly improving, just last year (February 2018), Hyundai successfully demonstrated Level 4 autonomous driving technology on a highway. Now, the large automobile group is throwing all the chips into its newest partnership with Aptiv, valued at a total of USD 2 billion invested from each.

On one end, Aptiv will make available its autonomous driving technology, intellectual property, and approximately 700 employees that work on the development of autonomous driving solutions. Together it amounts to USD 2 billion. Divisions of The Hyundai Motor Group, Hyundai Motor, Kia Motors and Hyundai Mobis, will collectively invest USD 0.4 billion in vehicle engineering services, R&D resources, and access to intellectual property, and contribute in cash USD 1.6 billion at the closing of the project.

4 billion USD dollars is a lot of cheddar! Interested to see where this new joint venture goes? Follow along on NowCar social media.

Photo Source/Copyright: Aptiv