The development of autonomous vehicles by global automobile manufacturers is increasingly failing. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has stated that he will relax regulations and support the development of autonomous driving technology after taking office next year, but forecasts suggest that some companies, such as Tesla, will monopolize the benefits due to the contraction and abandonment of projects by established automakers.
According to foreign media on the 15th, General Motors (GM) of the United States recently announced that it would halt further investment in its fully autonomous subsidiary, Cruise, which is developing a robotaxi. Instead of withdrawing from the development of fully autonomous vehicles, for which success is uncertain, the company plans to invest funds into enhancing the performance of driving assistance systems applied to currently sold internal combustion engine vehicles and electric vehicles.
In October 2016, GM acquired Cruise for $1 billion (about 1.43 trillion won). The amount invested by GM in Cruise has reached $2 billion this year alone, and the total investment since the acquisition has exceeded $10 billion. GM's plan was to invest the funds accumulated after withdrawing from most global establishments, including in Europe, South Africa, and India, into future technologies to gain a competitive edge in the electric vehicle and fully autonomous vehicle markets.
However, Cruise's fully autonomous vehicle development has not yielded results as anticipated. Although it was assessed as having the second-highest level of technological capability in the U.S. market after Google's Waymo, it has continuously accumulated deficits, suffering losses totaling $8 billion from 2016 to the third quarter of last year. Recently, following a series of fatalities involving robotaxis, it has currently suspended even test operations.
Ford and Volkswagen also invested $1 billion and $2.6 billion, respectively, in the autonomous driving startup Argo AI in 2017, but they halted further investments in 2022 without achieving significant results. At that time, Ford's Chief Financial Officer John Lawler noted, "It has become clear that the commercialization of fully autonomous vehicles is still far off. We have concluded that we do not need to develop this technology ourselves."
Hyundai Motor is also stepping back from the development of fully autonomous vehicles. In 2020, the company established a joint venture with the U.S. startup Aptiv called Motional; however, this company indefinitely postponed plans for the commercialization of autonomous vehicles in May of this year and has initiated restructuring, including laying off some employees. Motional promoted a robotaxi business using Hyundai's Ioniq 5 but has achieved little success, recording approximately 2.3 trillion won in cumulative losses over four years.
In the United States, the world's largest automobile market, support for fully autonomous vehicle technology is expected to strengthen starting next year. Bloomberg reported last month that Donald Trump plans to prioritize policies for fully autonomous vehicles at the Department of Transportation. Currently, U.S. transportation authorities limit the number of fully autonomous test vehicles that automakers can deploy each year to 2,500, but this regulation is expected to be lifted under Trump’s second administration.
In the automotive industry, there are prospects that the benefits of easing regulations in the U.S. will be concentrated among a few companies such as Tesla and Google as major automakers continue to abandon projects or initiate restructuring.
Tesla has announced plans to produce its autonomous robotaxi, called "Cybercab," by next year or, at the latest, 2027. The price is set at around $30,000. Tesla is also pursuing plans to sell its self-developed fully autonomous driving software, Full Self Driving (FSD), in regions including Europe and China starting next year. It is reported that vehicles equipped with FSD have accumulated over 2 billion kilometers of driving distance, acquiring significantly more driving data compared to competitors.
Waymo, Google's autonomous driving subsidiary, is currently regarded as a leader in the fully autonomous vehicle sector. Waymo is operating test vehicles in major cities, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, and Phoenix. Forbes, an American economic magazine, reported that Waymo has significantly widened the technological gap with competitors and predicted that its growth rate would accelerate in the future.
Last month, Hyundai Motor entered into a strategic partnership with Waymo. It was decided to apply Waymo’s sixth-generation fully autonomous driving technology, known as "Waymo Driver," to the Ioniq 5 for use in robotaxi services. The Ioniq 5 to be supplied to Waymo is scheduled to be produced starting next year at Hyundai's electric vehicle factory in the United States, Metaplant America.
Regarding this, an automotive industry official stated, "There are various opinions in the industry that Hyundai, which has initiated restructuring at Motional, may be adjusting its strategy to focus on joint ventures with Waymo rather than developing fully autonomous driving technology in-house."