Skip to Content
Smart cities

Google’s Old Autonomy Wizard Will Now Make VW and Hyundai Cars Drive Themselves

January 4, 2018

A startup called Aurora, founded by one of the biggest names in self-driving tech, has scored a huge deal to make mainstream cars robotic.

The plan:  According to Bloomberg, Aurora will work with VW and Hyundai to "outfit traditional vehicles with self-driving software and systems.” That’s not a new idea (see “Tech Firms Invite Automakers to Take a Back Seat on Self-Driving Cars”), but the firm does have fearsome chops to make it happpen.

The pedigree: Auroa was established by Chris Urmson (who was director of Google’s autonomous car division until he left in 2016), and boasts Sterling Anderson (former head of Tesla Autopilot) and Drew Bagnell (a founding member of Uber’s driverless car team) among its 70 staff.

What to expect: With VW, Aurora will develop a lineup of driverless shuttles and delivery vans. With Hyundai, it will help build an autonomous fuel cell car, about which details are scant.

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language

A neural network trained on the experiences of a single young child managed to learn one of the core components of language: how to match words to the objects they represent.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.