Hyundai and Kia Invest in Self-driving Company Aurora

Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors would invest self-driving technology company Aurora Innovation on Thursday to further development of the autonomous vehicle technologies.

“With the new investment, the companies have agreed to expand research to a wide range of models and to build an optimal platform for Hyundai and Kia’s autonomous vehicles,” Hyundai said.

The investment of self-driving is part of carmakers’ plan to be particular in the worldwide of autonomous driving ecosystem and to introduce car at an early age, according to Hyundai Motor Group without revealing the size of the investment.

 Hyundai and Kia will underpin cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), perception and control-based technology based on Aurora’s autonomous driving system Aurora Driver, it said.

“Hyundai and Aurora plan to commercialize Level 4 driverless car technologies in smart cities by 2021, initially using Hyundai’s Nexo hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicle,” the statement said.

The partnership between the carmaker and the technology launch started in January 2018 at the Consumer Electronics Show.

The two sides have since been co-developing autonomous driving technology by using Hyundai Motor’s fuel-cell powered electric vehicle Nexo.

“By partnering with the world’s top-class companies in the autonomous driving systems industry, Hyundai Motor Group will continue to develop (a) more innovative and safer self-driving car,” said Hyundai Motor Group President Chi Young-cho.

In a blog spot, Aurora said that the two company’s investment is part of a series B financing round, which has now increased above $600 million.

The Aurora Innovation was established in 2017 and employs around 200 at offices in Pittsburgh, Palo Alto and San Francisco. Chris Urmson is the CEO of Aurora led a Google self-driving project unit it spun off as Waymo, a lift-sharing start.

Sterling Anderson is other co-founders of Aurora, the former chief program manager of Tesla’s Model X and director of the pilot program and Drew Bagnell who also formerly autonomy architect and perception lead at the Uber.

U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in the Level 4 vehicle the driver is no need to take control as the car is intended to doing well all safety-critical driving functions and monitor road conditions.

 The South Korean automotive Hyundai is also look for further company with worldwide firms in the autonomous field.

Hyundai Motor has been working with worldwide companies, including Intel and Nvidia, for AI-based technology development, it also taking part in the Apollo Project, Baidu’s open autonomous driving program.