Hyundai and Avride Team to Develop Robotaxi Fleet

Hyundai has launched a partnership with autonomous vehicle/robot delivery firm Avride.

The collaboration will focus on the development of autonomous vehicles equipped with Avride’s driving system, while also expanding Avride’s fleet of Hyundai IONIQ 5 vehicles, according to a Wednesday (March 5) announcement on Avride’s blog.

“Our team has been working with Hyundai Motor Group since 2019, and we value the professionalism and collaboration that have defined this partnership,” Avride CEO Dmitry Polishchuk said in the announcement.

“This new agreement with Hyundai Motor Company will help us scale our operations significantly, with plans to expand our fleet to up to 100 autonomous IONIQ 5’s in 2025, leveraging Hyundai Motor’s IONIQ 5 and our autonomous driving technology.”

In addition to developing a fleet of autonomous vehicles for robotaxi applications, the companies say they plan to explore things like autonomous delivery services using Avride’s robots, “with a shared commitment to advancing the future of smart transportation.”

The two companies are teaming up amid a wave of self-driving car projects by both automakers and ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft.

For example, Stellantis recently launched STLA Autodrive, its in-house automated driving system that allows drivers to “temporarily engage in non-driving tasks,” such as watching a movie, catching up on emails or reading, at speeds of up to 37 MPH.

Lyft last month detailed its plans to launch self-driving robotaxis in Dallas next year, with other markets to follow.

These cars will be owned and financed by Marubeni, a Japanese fleet management company, and will feature Mobileye’s self-driving technology.

“AVs will be a transformational addition to the marketplace,” said Lyft CEO David Risher. “We’ll start in Dallas and we do expect to move into other markets.”

Uber recently projected that the autonomous vehicle market will reach $1 trillion, while Tesla’s Cybercab is slated to begin volume production in 2026.

“There is a path where Tesla is worth more than the next top 5 companies combined. There’s a path to that. It is difficult, but achievable,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk told investors earlier this year. “It is overwhelmingly due to autonomous vehicles and autonomous humanoid robots.”

This is the third high-profile partnership announcement involving Avride in the last five months. In January, the company teamed with Grubhub to offer robot delivery on college campuses.

And in October, Avride expanded an earlier arrangement with Uber, a deal that involves both robot food delivery via Uber Eats and robotaxi services in Dallas. That taxi fleet, Avride said Wednesday, will include the vehicles it is now developing with Hyundai.