Hyundai’s Ioniq Car Combines Electric, Self-driving Tech with More Advances

A new partnership expected will adds another self-driving electric vehicle line to the mix. Catherine Schu wrote about it for techcrunch.com.

Hyundai launched its own electric vehicle brand, Ioniq, in August 2020, with plans to bring three all-electric vehicles to market over the next four years, as part of its strategy to sell one million battery electric vehicles and take a 10% share of the EV market by 2025. Hyundai also has a joint venture with autonomous driving technology company Aptiv to make Level 4 and Level 5 production-ready self-driving systems available to robotaxi, fleet operators and automakers by 2022. The Aptiv partnership was announced in 2019.

Now Hyundai is reportedly in talks with Apple to produce an autonomous electric vehicle, but says discussions are still in the “early stage” and still undecided. News of a potential partnership with Apple, however, was enough to send shares of Hyundai Motor Company up more than 20% on the Korea Exchange during trading on Friday.

The talks were first reported by the Korea Economic Daily and confirmed by Hyundai to Bloomberg.

” The Korean auto giant also told CNBC that “we understand Apple is in discussion with a variety of global automakers, including Hyundai Motor. As the discussion is at its early stage, nothing has been decided.”

Reuters reported last month that Apple’s car initiative, called Project Titan, is still going on, with plans to develop an autonomous electric passenger vehicle. But the car is not expected to launch until 2024. Here is what the rumors are saying:

The ‘Apple car’ chatter is back with new reports pointing to a 2024 launch date

Aptiv and Hyundai form new joint venture focused on autonomous driving

The Apple chatter is really what has people excited. So far there has been no official response from either Apple or Hyundai, but watch for it in the near future. Most, if not all, car companies can see the writing on the wall when it comes to fossil fuels. CEOs of the largest automotive companies are wholeheartedly getting into and making use of the AI-driven changes that can no longer be ignored. The car-buying public demands the same ease of usage in an electric car that they get in their living room at home.

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