Motional robotaxis join the Uber app in Vegas two years after major reset
📖 Full Retelling
The launch comes just two years after a major reboot at Hyundai-owned Motional. The service will start with a safety monitor, which Motional hopes to remove by year's end.
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Uber has added another company’s autonomous vehicles to its growing robotaxi network. Hyundai-owned Motional’s self-driving version of the Ioniq 5 is now available to be hailed for rides to and from five areas around the city — with a safety monitor in the car, for now. Starting Friday, the vehicles will do pickup and drop-offs in the rideshare zones at Resorts World and Encore hotel casinos on the Strip, along with the Westgate, which is next to the Las Vegas Convention Center. The Motional AVs will also handle rides to and from the Town Square shopping center near the city’s airport, and curbside in Downtown Las Vegas. Uber and Motional said Friday that they plan to expand the operating area in the future, but did not offer specifics. As in other cities, there is no way to specifically request a robotaxi ride. Customers will increase the chance of getting matched with one by enabling autonomous vehicle pickup within the Uber app. The companies said they expect to be able to run a fully driverless service in Las Vegas by the end of this year. The launch in Las Vegas is a milestone for Motional, which found itself in real trouble two years ago. Created as a joint venture between Hyundai and Aptiv, the company was behind on its goal of launching a robotaxi service with Uber rival Lyft. Aptiv pulled out of funding the joint venture, leaving Hyundai to decide whether to pick up the financial slack, or cut bait. Hyundai decided to plug another $1 billion into Motional, while the wholly-owned AV startup went through a restructuring that resulted in layoffs of about 40% of its workforce . It also reworked how it was building its autonomous vehicle technology. Similar to many other players in the industry, Motional decided to pivot to an approach based more on neural networks. “We saw that there was tremendous potential with all the advancements that were happening within AI; and we also saw that while we had a safe, driverless system, there was a gap to getting to an affo...
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