Ioniq 5

Make
Hyundai
Segment
SUV

Hyundai can't seem to put a foot wrong: not only did the Korean automaker recently smash its all-time sales record in the US, but its first-ever electric vehicle, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 also won the World Car Of The Year awards, and now this cute little Korean EV crossover is starting to deliver food in California using cutting-edge autonomous technology. Autonomous driving has been a contentious subject of late, with many cars claiming to be self-driving, yet ending up causing serious accidents and even death. Despite these setbacks, many manufacturers are getting close to true self-driving tech, and Hyundai is at the forefront.

Autonomous driving will one day be used to fulfill many needs, but at the movement, Californians are more focused on getting their pizza delivered on time than pondering the capabilities of advanced artificial intelligence and human ingenuity. UberEats deliveries in Santa Monica have taken a step into the future this week with the help of Motional. The two companies announced their partnership in December of 2021, and have since been gearing up to launch their autonomous food delivery service. The two companies are currently running a pilot program to monitor and measure how customers interact and respond to the new system, and Uber hopes that this will take it one step closer to becoming a zero-emission mobility platform by 2030.

The system is pretty straightforward: the customers order their food through the UberEats app as per usual and then trace the vehicle to the pick-up spot. Once the vehicle arrives, users get a notification. The Ioniq 5 delivery cars have a special backseat compartment that holds the food, and the rear door is opened via the UberEats app. In order to streamline this process, Motional spends months testing the cars in the wider LA region, but humans are unpredictable creatures, and even the smartest computer doesn't know what a cracked up LA zombie might do.

"This pilot program signifies the next phase of the company's commercial roadmap," said Abe Ghabra, Motional's COO. "The two will use feedback from this program to shape how it can quickly scale, expanding to more areas in Los Angeles and other cities. Motional sees this as laying the groundwork for future commercial activities with Uber." Autonomous delivery vehicles and taxis are becoming a reality, but still face an uphill battle, partly because humans are pretty dumb in general, and mostly because the laws to govern this tech haven't been written yet.