The Hyundai Ioniq 5 Will Join Waymo’s Driverless Taxi Fleet

Waymo, the Alphabet-owned autonomous taxi company, will add American-made Hyundai Ioniq 5 electric crossovers to its fleet. This will be the first phase of a new, multi-year partnership between Waymo and Hyundai Motor Company that will result in the robotaxi venture getting a “significant” number of vehicles from the automaker’s EV manufacturing facility in Georgia.

The first Ioniq 5 EVs with Waymo’s autonomous driving technology will begin initial on-road testing by late 2025 and will become available for customer rides in the years to follow. Hyundai will fit the cars with autonomous-ready modifications like redundant hardware and power doors and then, after leaving the assembly line in Georgia, the EVs will be fitted with the robotaxi company’s sixth-generation Waymo Driver hardware and software suite.

“Waymo’s transformational technology is improving road safety where they operate, and the IONIQ 5 is the ideal vehicle to scale this further,” said José Muñoz, president and global COO of Hyundai Motor Company. “The team at our new manufacturing facility is ready to allocate a significant number of vehicles for the Waymo One fleet as it continues to expand. Importantly, this is the first step in the partnership between the two companies and we are actively exploring additional opportunities for collaboration.”

The same autonomous driving system is used in the Zeekr-developed driverless minivan, which features 13 cameras, 6 radars, 4 lidar sensors and several audio receivers. Together, they provide overlapping, 360-degree fields of view for the car’s computers, allowing it to detect objects at up to 1,640 feet away. The latest generation Waymo Driver suite is also designed to work better in inclement weather and has modular components that can be replaced depending on where the vehicles are deployed, to better cope with snowy conditions or fog.

The Zeekr minivan is built in China without any automated driving hardware or software installed. According to Waymo, the vehicle is shipped to the United States where the sensor suite is installed. That said, questions regarding the EV’s viability stateside after the hiked import tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles and the impending ban on Chinese-made software arose as the first prototypes landed here.

Waymo did not address the issue in any of its press releases but with this latest partnership with Hyundai, the potential problems associated with Zeekr’s minivan are non-existent, as the Ioniq 5 will be built in the United States by a South Korean company.

Currently, Waymo uses Jaguar I-Pace electric crossovers fitted with its fifth-generation sensor suite to offer driverless taxi rides in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin. However, the I-Pace EV has been discontinued by Jaguar, making adding new vehicles to the fleet or replacing damaged cars impossible after the inventory dries up–though spare parts will still be available for a while.