Hyundai, Aptiv Form Autonomous Vehicle JV

Hyundai Motor Group and Aptiv plc have announced a 50:50 joint venture set up to design and develop technologies for self-driving cars. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2020.

The partners aim to have a production-ready autonomous driving platform available for robo-taxi providers, fleet operators and carmakers in 2022. Testing of SAE Level 4 and 5 systems will begin next year.

The new company, which is valued at $4 billion, will be based in Boston and led by Karl Iagnemma, currently president of Aptiv’s Autonomous Mobility operations. The joint venture's operations in South Korea will serve as a base for vehicle modification and a testbed for autonomous driving mobility service platforms.

Hyundai Motor, Kia Motors and Hyundai Mobis will contribute a combined $1.6 billion in cash to the venture. They also will provide $400 million in vehicle engineering services, R&D resources and access to intellectual property.

Aptiv will supply its autonomous driving technology, intellectual property and about 700 employees to the joint operation.

Earlier this year, Aptiv created an open-source dataset that developers of autonomous driving systems can access for free. The supplier, which was spun off from Delphi Automotive plc two years ago, currently operates more than 100 autonomous vehicles that have provided 70,000 paid rides globally.