Autobayng News Team
- Hyundai’s Motional autonomous division announced that it aims to launch a robotaxi service in Las Vegas by the end of this year.
- Motional has roots in startups launched in the 2010s and has been testing cars since 2021, but now it aims to get serious.
- The effort could boost Hyundai’s own autonomy game, but it faces stiff competition from Waymo—which is also about to use Ioniq 5 AVs.
The Hyundai Ioniq 5 has been conscripted into robotaxi service before. It’s the autonomous vehicle of choice for a few startups, and soon, it will provide necessary backup for Waymo’s ubiquitous fleet of Jaguar I-Pace SUVs.
But the Ioniq 5 may be deployed for its most crucial tour of duty yet, as its maker gets into the autonomous taxi game more directly.
CES 2026 served as the coming-out party for Motional, Hyundai’s long-simmering in-house autonomous vehicle division. At the tech trade show, Motional officials announced that they aim to launch their commercial robotaxi service in Las Vegas in partnership with one of the major ride-hailing networks by the end of this year. Motional will run Ioniq 5 cabs fitted with sensors, software, AI systems and hardware developed directly in concert with Hyundai.
In doing so, Hyundai will try to accomplish what other automakers spent fortunes attempting, but ultimately failed at: building a successful in-house autonomous taxi division. On its face, that may seem like a folly, considering General Motors folded its cards on Cruise after losing $10 billion and Ford and Volkswagen pulled out of Argo AI right as its own robotaxi service seemed on the cusp of launching. Hyundai Motional Robotaxi CES 2026 Photo by: Patrick George
But as Motional CEO Laura Major tells it, Hyundai is willing to play the long game here—and this one ties directly into its other future-facing bets, like humanoid robotics. At CES, the automaker announced plans to put robot workers in its factories this decade, care of another subsidiary, Boston Dynamics.
“I think Hyundai is committed to robotics and autonomy and AI. They see it having a profound impact on the world,” Major told InsideEVs in an interview. “And autonomy is coming to the world first through robotaxis.”
Still, the service has a long way to go to prove this concept, both technologically and against bigger players. Waymo alone aims to be in more than two dozen cities by the end of 2026, right as Motional is working on ramping up operations in one.
Even with Hyundai’s backing, can Motional stand out as the autonomy wars heat up—or will the real fruits of its labor end up on the next car you buy from the Korean automaker? Hyundai Motional Robotaxi CES 2026 Photo by: Patrick George
Motional’s Slow-Burn Rise
Motional may be a Hyundai division now. But it didn’t start out that way, or even use that name.
The company’s roots are in nuTonomy and Ottomatika, two of the earliest players in the AV space, founded out of MIT and Carnegie Mellon in the early 2010s. It was acquired by Delphi (itself a former General Motors subsidiary) and renamed Aptiv, which then paired with Hyundai for a $4 billion AV joint venture. The Motional name came next, as did over 100,000 public pilot rides through Uber and Lyft. A commercial autonomous taxi service was expected to follow in 2022.
Things didn’t work out that way. While testing continued with human safety operators behind the wheel, losses mounted, Aptiv slashed its stake in the venture, jobs were cut and commercial operations were halted. That was in 2024. The following year, Major was named the company’s chief executive after spending years as its CTO. CEO Laura Major. Photo by: Hyundai
“We really realized that while we could get to a safe driverless system, the technology at that point was not cost-efficient enough to create a profitable business,” she said of Motional’s years of fits and starts. “This idea that once you have a driverless system, you can suddenly deploy it globally wasn’t proving to be a reality.”
That experience echoes much of what’s sometimes called the “autonomous winter“: the fall of several major players in the AV space after tremendous hype and sizable investments in the 2010s. And like the rest of the pack, changed since then probably won’t surprise anyone: the artificial intelligence boom, Major said. With the rise of neural networks, cars didn’t have to be “trained” anew to drive in each city they want to deploy in new places.
“This was an a-ha moment for us, that this is what can get us to a safe, driverless system that also is generalizable,” Major said. “It can move much more fluidly.” Even so, she said that Motional today integrates the traditional rule-based software approach of robotics with end-to-end AI models, which the company hopes will allow it to navigate the tricky edge cases that tend to trip up fully autonomous vehicles.
Hyundai Motional Robotaxi CES 2026
Photo by: Patrick George
But that story could be boilerplate for almost any AV taxi company right now. One big difference, Major said, is Motional’s relationship with Hyundai.
The In-House Ioniq 5 Robotaxi
If you’ve ever seen or ridden in a Waymo, Motional’s Ioniq 5 taxi has the same sort of vibe. The popular EV crossover is fitted with more than 30 sensors, including cameras, radar, and a lidar array. Unlike Tesla’s planned Cybercab or the Zoox autonomous pod, it keeps its steering wheel and pedals. But it adds a set of screens for the rear seats that a rider can use to start the trip, ask the vehicle to pull over or call for help. Unlike Waymo’s current cars, the doors close automatically, too. Hyundai Motional Robotaxi CES 2026 Photo by: Patrick George
But while Waymo’s upcoming Ioniq 5 AVs, or the ones used by Austin-based Avride, the technology on Motional’s cars is developed in-house with Hyundai—including the AI-powered technology stack. “It comes off a Hyundai production line, fully integrated,” Major said. “It gets sent to us ready to go.”
That puts Motional at the forefront of a major intiative for Hyundai: catching up on both advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and eventually, full autonomy. Hyundai Motional Robotaxi CES 2026 Photo by: Patrick George Hyundai Motional Robotaxi CES 2026 Photo by: Patrick George Hyundai Motional Robotaxi CES 2026 Photo by: Patrick George Photos by: Patrick George
The Korean automaker does not offer any hands-free driving assistance tech like GM’s Super Cruise or Ford’s BlueCruise, and company executives in the home country have expressed a desire to match what Tesla is trying to do with Full Self-Driving and its own Robotaxi service. Hyundai’s Advanced Vehicle Platform division chief recently stepped down due to slow progress in that space, even as new competitors from China accelerate on AVs in ways most Americans haven’t even seen yet.
Major said that Motional’s work is explicitly aimed at moving that ball forward for Hyundai. “I think there’s real value to some of the the internalization and the vertical integration,” she said. “When you look at combining [software-defined vehicles], autonomy, operating a fleet at scale… when you can have a closer partnership and really sort of co-design these solutions together, it opens up new opportunities.” Hyundai Motional Robotaxi CES 2026 Photo by: Patrick George
But that will also be a test of Hyundai’s ability to stomach massive investments into autonomy with returns that aren’t immediately clear. At the same time, Hyundai—a well-capitalized Korean conglomerate that’s insulated from the quarterly pressures that dog American companies—may be better positioned to let these investments play out. And if all goes well, it could be a technology Motional licenses to other players.
Major certainly hopes so. “My vision is that eventually this is on everybody’s own car,” she said. “If you want to drive your own car, you can. But then if you’re driving late at night, you can hang out in the back seat if you want. If you’ve got your kids in the car with you, and you want to play a game in the back seat, you can do that. I think there’s a lot of commercial opportunities, but ride-hail is a first start for all.”
For now, the goal is simply to get commercial ride-hailing up and running in a way that makes customers want to embrace it. Do that, and the rest may fall into place quickly. “We’ve tried to be thoughtful about all that, to make it just a seamless passenger experience,” Major said. “Safe, comfortable and smooth.”
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com More Hyundai News We want your opinion! What would you like to see on Insideevs.com? – The InsideEVs team Gallery: Hyundai Motional Robotaxi CES 2026
