The race of the great automobile manufacturers for electrification and piloted driving is becoming more and more evident every day, and that is that agreements between brands and technology companies happen almost daily. The last of them have starred Hyundai Motor Group.

The Korean brands Hyundai and Kia have announced an important investment in the Aurora firm Aurora Innovation Inc, with the aim of accelerating the development of technologies associated with autonomous vehicles and a future platform dedicated to this type of automated vehicles.

This maneuver consolidates the strategic collaboration in which Hyundai, Kia and Aurora have been working since last year, when they began to experiment with autonomous driving technologies based on the fuel cell vehicle (powered by hydrogen) of the Korean giant, the Hyundai Nexo.

The company of Palo Alto, California, has a pilot driving system called Aurora Driver, which integrates all kinds of sensors, such as Lidar, radar or cameras, as well as the electronic “brain” that interprets all this information to draw the environment and deal with properly each situation during circulation.

In fact, Hyundai plans include the launch to the market for the year 2021 of vehicles with a level 4 autonomy, i.e. with a high automation that dispenses with the intervention of the driver, the step prior to the total automation. In addition, for the same year Hyundai also plans a pilot program of autonomous robo-taxis in ‘smart cities’.

Roadmap: electrical and self-employed

In this way, the Korean group reinforces its commitment to future mobility, since a few weeks ago it announced that its spare parts division Hyundai Mobis is working together with Yandex (the Russian Google) in the development of an autonomous car, which they also promised to present before the end of the year.

Last May Hyundai and Kia also announced a major movement in the field of electric vehicles, with the investment of 80 million euros in the Croatian firm Rimac, so they will have access to the electrical technology of this company, with which they work other large firms such as Porsche, Aston Martin or Pininfarina.