Hyundai Mobis is partnering with Russia’s biggest IT company to develop an autonomous driving platform. Hyundai Mobis a entered into an MOU for joint development of an AI-based autonomous driving platform with Yandex, one of the Europe’s largest Internet companies that build intelligent products and services powered by machine learning.

The essence of the MOU is to jointly develop an AI-based fully autonomous vehicle platform and to provide unmanned mobility services such as robotaxis. Starting with this cooperation, the two companies anticipate to expand the scope of the mutual cooperation to include artificial intelligence technologies for voice and video recognition, as well as infotainment technologies. It is the first time that Hyundai Mobis has signed an MOU with a global IT company.

Our self-driving technologies are unique and have already proven their scalability. Yandex’s self-driving cars have been successfully driving on the streets of Moscow, Tel Aviv and Las Vegas, which means the fleet can be expanded to drive anywhere. It took us just two years to go from the first basic tests to a full-fledged public robotaxi service. Now, thanks to agreement with Hyundai Mobis, we will be able to move even faster.

—Arkady Volozh, CEO of Yandex

The driving platform will be configured by Hyundai Mobis by installing autonomous driving sensors and developing vehicle control software. Yandex will integrate their AI-based autonomous driving software in this platform and will perform extensive tests. The co-developed platform will be deployed in the newest generation of Hyundai Sonata, which will serve as robotaxi.

The size of the fleet will be increased to up to 100 vehicles and the services will be available throughout Russia and other countries where Yandex is licensed to operate autonomous vehicles.