"Motional told TechCrunch it has rebooted its robotaxi plans with an AI-first approach to its self-driving system and a promise to launch a commercial driverless service in Las Vegas by the end of 2026. The company has already opened up a robotaxi service - with a human safety operator behind the wheel - to its employees. It plans to offer that service to the public with an unnamed ride-hailing partner later this year."
"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 affordable solution that could generalize and scale globally," Motional president and CEO Laura Major said during a presentation at the company's Las Vegas facilities. "And so we made the very hard decision to pause our commercial activities, to slow down in the near term so that we could speed up."
Motional faced major setbacks including a missed driverless robotaxi launch with Lyft, loss of Aptiv as a backer, and a 40% restructuring in May 2024 that reduced headcount from about 1,400 to less than 600. Hyundai invested an additional $1 billion to sustain operations. The company paused commercial activities and shifted from a classic robotics approach to an AI foundation-model strategy. Motional is running employee-only robotaxi rides with a human safety operator and plans a public rollout with an unnamed ride-hailing partner later this year. The company targets a fully driverless commercial service in Las Vegas by the end of 2026.
Read at TechCrunch
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