Soon you could see Waymo's self-driving technology in Hyundai cars. Autonomous driving technology developer Waymo said this week it would partner with Korean automaker Hyundai to equip a fleet of its electric vehicles with self-driving technology. The vehicles, modified Ioniq 5s, will hit the roads in late 2025 as part of Waymo's self-driving taxi service, the companies said.
José Muñoz, president and global COO of Hyundai Motor Company, called the agreement in a statement a “first step” in the collaboration between the two companies. “We are actively exploring additional opportunities for collaboration,” he said, opening the possibility that Waymo self-driving technology could one day be installed on Hyundai passenger vehicles.
However, the multinational partnership is the latest to raise questions about how Waymo, perhaps the world's most successful autonomous driving company, will handle a global reshuffling of the auto industry.
China's new dominance in auto production and exports has worried other global automakers, some of whom have argued that the country has unfair trade advantages. Over the past year, Western countries have built stronger trade walls to prevent the invasion of cheap Chinese electric and autonomous vehicles. Last month, the US finalized rules that dramatically increased tariffs on Chinese-made electric cars and battery materials.
The U.S. Commerce Department also proposed a rule last month that would ban certain Chinese and Russian automotive hardware and software from the U.S., focusing on technology that enables autonomy. Just this week, the European Union voted to increase tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles.
Interestingly, Waymo emphasizes that it still has a partnership with Chinese automaker Zeekr. The deal, announced in late 2021, has seen Zeekr custom-build more spacious autonomous minivans for the Alphabet subsidiary, which are also cheaper to produce. The Zeekr vehicle officially debuted in San Francisco in June, although Waymo says it is still in testing and not yet part of its public fleet.
Zeekr is owned by Chinese automaker Geely, although its design center and one of its research and development facilities are located in Gothenburg, Sweden. The Swedish city is also the headquarters of carmakers Volvo and Polestar, an all-electric premium car manufacturer majority owned by Geely.
In an email on Friday, Waymo spokesperson Chris Bonelli wrote that the Hyundai Ioniq 5s “will not replace any of our other vehicle platforms,” and said the company is “hard at work bringing the latest version of Waymo's technology to the Zeekr platform validation”.
In proposing new rules targeting Chinese-made automotive software and hardware, the US government argued that such technology installed on US vehicles could create a national security problem in the long term. “Imagine if there were thousands or hundreds of thousands of China-linked vehicles on American roads that could be immediately and simultaneously disabled by someone in Beijing,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said earlier this year.
But in public comments submitted to the Commerce Department in April, Waymo representatives emphasized that China, despite its partnership with the Chinese automaker, has nothing to do with the vital technology of the Zeekr-made robotaxi. “The AV-ready base vehicles supplied to Waymo do not have built-in drive automation or telematics capabilities,” the company wrote, saying that only U.S.-based Waymo personnel install autonomous technology on vehicles in a U.S. factory. The company said that once the vehicles are operational in the US, they will not be able to communicate remotely with the vehicle manufacturer: Zeekr.
