Public Becoming More Receptive to AV Driving During Pandemic: Motional CEO
The personal health and safety risks of COVID-19 are casting autonomous driving in a more positive public light than before the pandemic, Motional President-CEO Karl Iagnemma told an Axios webinar Tuesday. The Hyundai-Aptiv autonomous vehicle joint venture was rebranded Tuesday as Motional.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
People increasingly “appreciate the value of a driverless experience” compared with human-driven ride-hailing services, and “not having to share space with an individual you may not know,” said Iagnemma. Motional canvassed 1,000 U.S. consumers, finding that fear and risk of COVID-19 infection “had a significant influence” on the transportation decisions of 70% of those polled, he said.
About one in five survey respondents is “more interested in experiencing driverless technology” than pre-pandemic, said Iagnemma. “That tells me what we’re building at Motional is more relevant and more important than ever.” AV safety before COVID-19 “was only about avoiding crashes,” he said. It’s now also about “minimizing risks of infection,” he said.
There’s a “technical dimension” to assuring the public that a driverless environment is “safe and sanitary,” said Iagnemma. Motional in Las Vegas runs what it believes is the world’s largest, open-to-the-public “autonomous mobility service,” he said. “We have found that if you can get people in a car and deliver a trip that’s confident, comfortable and safe and ultimately feels like a human-driven ride, people will feel comfortable. That will lead to adoption of the technology.”
How quickly autonomous driving becomes ubiquitous in the U.S. will vary by locale, said Iagnemma. Motional's Las Vegas service has given more than 100,000 rides. “If you’re a resident of Vegas, you’ve seen our cars. You’ve probably ridden in one of our vehicles.”
Motional’s strategy will be to deploy its technology in cities to “match their technical maturity,” said Iagnemma. “We’re going to go in places where we can safely and confidently drive. A more complex environment -- Times Square at rush hour -- that will come a little bit later. But in some cities, autonomous vehicles are here today.”
Asked whether he thinks the pandemic is speeding autonomous driving deployments because of the fewer cars on the road, Iagnemma said: “We’re having a lot of conversations with cities that we maybe wouldn’t have had a few months ago. Access to a diversity of transportation options is more important than ever for the general public.” Autonomous mobility will be “an important transportation option for everyone,” he said. “Cities understand that, and they want to deliver that.”