Autonomous vehicle venture Motional and ride services company Via said they will launch on Thursday a robo-taxi service in Las Vegas, the latest step by Motional toward commercial deployment of its autonomous vehicle systems.
Via will use vehicles outfitted with Motional autonomous driving systems to offer free rides between several locations in downtown Las Vegas. Motional is a joint venture of Hyundai Motor Co. and automotive technology supplier Aptiv.
Motional CEO Karl Iagnemma told Reuters the company is on track to launch fully driverless rides late next year using Hyundai electric vehicles on Lyft Inc.’s network in Las Vegas in a separate initiative.
Motional is one of several autonomous driving technology companies pushing to start revenue-generating services in the U.S. using driverless vehicles over the next one to two years.
“Everything in this industry has accelerated,” Iagnemma said. “Now the question is how quickly can you scale?”
