The way Hyundai have gone about testing out their autonomous technologies is already a lot more subtle than what most rivals have done.
In fact, there’s very little in terms of visuals that might betray this car as being fully-autonomous, if you were to ignore the decals of course.
Hyundai have hidden the LiDAR system behind the Ioniq’s front bumper, instead of placing it onto its roof like Ford did with the Fusion. Furthermore, the LiDAR tech was mixed in with a bunch of production-ready systems such as the Ioniq’s forward-facing radar and the Lane Keep Assist cameras.
During this brief drive on board the autonomous Ioniq, KBB’s Micah Muzio spoke to Hyundai’s Cason Grover about the car, touching on topics such as what it can or cannot see, as well as the chance of seeing a production-ready self-driving Ioniq any time soon.
Grover stated that his company doesn’t operate with a specific timeline in mind, but that the technology is there and they’ll keep testing it until all the issues (mapping, legislation etc) are resolved. He also mentions that consumers will probably need to wait “until the later end” of the 2020s.