BotRide (service of the pilotless taxi)

2019: Announcement

At the end of October, 2019 Hyundai announced start in California of service of the pilotless BotRide taxi. It will begin work on November 4 with assistance of Pony.ai and Via companies.

It will be possible to call self-governed cabs through mobile application. At first trips will be free, but are limited to the set territory and stops in certain places.

Hyundai announced start in California of service of the pilotless taxi

The South Korean producer provided the electric vehicles Hyundai Kona Electric equipped with a set of technologies for pilotless driving for this project: lidars, cameras, radars and different sensors.

BotRide will earn in Irvine, located in agglomeration Big Los Angeles. For launch of BotRide it will not be completely open for the public: will be able to use it "several hundred" of locals, including students of colleges in this area.

The project objective consists in studying a consumer behavior in the autonomous environment of joint use by the car — Christopher Chiang holding a post of the head of department of development, strategy and technologies of Hyundai comments on the forthcoming start of service. — We are going to learn about roads on which cars move and to optimize work with clients.

A choice of California as the place for start of service of the pilotless taxi is made not casually. This state is considered one of the most progressive in terms of laws on self-driving vehicles. In 2018 the Californian authorities were permitted to transport on robomobiles of passengers, and both with the driver driving, and using remote control. At the same time such trips should be only free.

Pony.ai was among four developers in California who obtained the license for transportation of passengers on UAVs (by the end of October, 2019).^[1]

Robotics

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