[AutonomousVehicles] Motional To Start Testing Autonomous Vehicles in California

[Cornelius Butler]

Hi Fellow Committee Members,
A company named Motional is about to start testing autonomous vehicles on
California Roads. I'm including the article link and text below.

Article Link
https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/10/motional-to-begin-testing-autonomous-vehicles-in-la-as-part-of-california-expansion-plan/

Article Text:

Motional to begin testing autonomous vehicles in LA as part of California
expansion plan
Kirsten Korosec at kirstenkorosec / 10:56 AM EDT•August 10, 2021
 Comment

Motional, the autonomous vehicle company born out of a $4 billion joint
venture with Aptiv and Hyundai, is expanding its presence in California by
opening a new operations facility in Los Angeles to support testing on
public roads, hiring more engineers and adding an office in Silicon Valley.

The investment into the area follows a hiring spree that has pushed
Motional’s total headcount to more than 1,000 people, an expansion into
Seoul and its announcement last December to launch fully driverless
robotaxi services in major U.S. cities in 2023 using the Lyft ride-hailing
network.

While Motional declined to disclose its investment into the California
expansion, the company is clearly putting its capital to work with plans to
hire dozens of people and scale up operations in Los Angeles and the San
Francisco Bay Area.

Motional has had an office in Los Angeles since 2016. The LA office is
where some of the company’s machine learning and hardware engineers are
based. As part of its expansion plan, Motional has moved the team into a
larger location in Santa Monica near the Santa Monica Pier.

Mortional is also opening a new operations facility located a few miles
away and plans to more than double the number of employees based in Los
Angeles to more than 100 people. The operations facility will support
Motional’s plans to begin mapping roads and eventually testing its
autonomous vehicles on public roads. Testing routes will initially be
centered in and around the Santa Monica area, near its office and
operations facility.

Motional said it will use the all-electric Hyundai IONIQ 5, the vehicle
that will be the cornerstone of its eventual commercial robotaxi service,
in its testing there. The Hyundai IONIQ 5, which was revealed in February
2021 with a consumer release date expected later this year, will be fully
integrated with Motional’s driverless system. The vehicles will be equipped
with the hardware and software needed for Level 4 autonomous driving
capabilities such as lidar, radar and cameras. Level 4, is a designation by
SAE, that means the vehicle will handle all driving operations in certain
conditions and environments.

For now, the testing will involve autonomous vehicles with a safety driver
behind the wheel. The company does not yet have a permit in the state to
test its AVs without a human operator behind the wheel. That permit issued
by the California Department of Motor Vehicles,

This is first time the company has tested on public roads in Los Angeles.
Motional already tests its AVs in Boston, Las Vegas, Pittsburgh and
Singapore.

Motional’s President and CEO Karl Iagnemma described this as a “doubling
down” of its West Coast footprint. “This expansion is the latest in our
growth trajectory and will position Motional with the talent, testing
capabilities, and R&D resources we need to deliver on our commercialization
roadmap, Iagnemma said, adding that Los Angeles has long been an important
part of its global operations.

Motional has also opened an office in Milpitas, a Silicon Valley town
located in the southern section of the San Francisco Bay. The company’s
compute design team will be based out of this office, Motional said in its
announcement.
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