Hyundai plans to launch a free robot taxi service in California

Hyundai will launch a free ride-hailing service with a fleet of autonomous electric cars in Irvine, California, starting on November 4th. The news comes after the South Korean automaker announced that it would invest $35 billion in autonomous and electric vehicle development over the next five years.

Hyundai is partnering with AV startup Pony.ai and ride-hailing service Via for the free taxi service. Interested riders can hail a self-driving car via a smartphone app. The cars won’t be fully driverless; Hyundai says a safety driver will be behind the wheel, and there will also be an additional engineer in the passenger seat. The vehicles will be constrained to a geofenced area in Irvine that covers “several residential, commercial, and...

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