Hyundai Motor Group showed outside audiences the first footage of a software-defined vehicle (SDV) equipped with Atria AI, its in-house self-driving platform, navigating city streets, signaling confidence in the technology.
The group released the road-test footage at an autonomous driving media day held on the 11th. Atria AI is a next-generation self-driving platform Hyundai Motor Group is developing on its own, with the goal of applying it to mass-production vehicles in the second half of 2029.
The test vehicle, built on the Ioniq 6, was fitted with eight cameras and one radar and drove smoothly on public roads at Level 2++. Level 2++ allows hands-off driving under driver supervision, extending to complex urban and ordinary road sections.
The vehicle traveled around Seoul's Gwanghwamun area, the Olympic Expressway and the Gyeongbu Expressway, accurately recognizing and avoiding nearby vehicles and pedestrians in sections congested with traffic and signals, as well as in narrow alleys with poor visibility.
When a vehicle cut in abruptly, it slowed to keep a safe distance, and it recognized right-turn-only signals that even ordinary drivers can find confusing before moving the car. At unprotected left turns, it entered naturally without disrupting the flow of traffic.
Hyundai Motor Group currently operates 20 SDV test-bed vehicles and 40 vehicles dedicated to data collection on a permanent basis, building its ability to handle a range of edge cases, or exceptional driving situations.
The group is also expanding its testing arena. From the end of this year, Hyundai Motor Group will deploy an autonomous SDV "pace car," or trial vehicle, in Gwangju, South Jeolla Province, to check the technology's performance and stability. The pace car is a pre-production validation vehicle one step beyond the test-bed cars.
Park Min-woo, president and head of the AVP Division at Hyundai Motor and Kia and chief executive of 42dot, pointed to "technological completeness" as the top priority in explaining why vehicles carrying the in-house platform will not reach mass production until 2029. "Where we need to go is a complete north star, the ultimate goal," Park said. "If we rush into mass production, we could end up mass-producing a half-baked Level 2++ that is far from that."
