Uber is reviving its self-driving taxi ambitions by striking a 10-year deal with an autonomous electric vehicle provider backed by Hyundai.
To supply the robo taxis, Uber is tapping Motional, a joint venture between Hyundai and Irish-American automotive supplier Aptiv to develop driverless cars. “The companies will strategically deploy the service in cities across the US, with the first trips expected to start later this year,” they said in the announcement.
Uber and Motional remained mum on details about the upcoming robo-taxi service. But it promises to be “an affordable, convenient, and safe transportation option for everyday travel,” according to the announcement.
Motional is also betting the partnership will boost adoption of driverless cars. “Motional now has unparalleled access to millions of riders and a roadmap to scale significantly over the next ten years,” says Motional CEO Karl Iagnemma. In the meantime, the company has also struck a similar partnership with Lyft to launch a robo-taxi service in Las Vegas next year with plans to expand it to other US cities in the future.
The news comes two years after Uber sold off its own self-driving unit to a San Francisco startup called Aurora Innovations. Uber previously poured a fortune into developing robo taxis. But in 2017, the company faced a high-profile lawsuit from Google’s original self-driving project, now dubbed Waymo, that claimed Uber had stolen its trade secrets.
A year later, the parties reached a $245 million settlement that involved Waymo taking a stake in Uber. But the autonomous vehicle troubles for the ride-hailing company didn’t stop there. A month later, a self-driving Uber vehicle accidentally killed a pedestrian in Arizona during a test drive at night. Uber, which rarely posts a profit, then sold its self-driving division in return for a stake in Aurora Innovations, which at the time was valued at $10 billion.