What is Motional?

Launch Lyft Network in Las Vegas

Motional has their HQ located in the Boston area. Motional is an American autonomous vehicle company founded in March 2020 as a joint venture between automaker Hyundai Motor Group and auto supplier Aptiv.

I’ve been noticing Hyundai has gotten very forward looking of late, and I’ve always been impressed by the GDP per capital innovation quotient of South Korea. The race to robo-taxis is very interesting to me. They are in headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, but Motional also maintains operations in Pittsburgh, Singapore, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles.

So why do companies like Motional matter? They bridge the present with the future of AVs, EVs and everything in-between. We are talking about a huge TAM, total addressable market.

The winners of this industry of AV integration will likely also become powerful robotics companies. The CEO of Motional is Karl Iagnemma. I find this is a very credible startup, if you can call it that.

Karl is an authority on robotics and autonomous vehicles whose opinion and commentary has been published and broadcast worldwide on Bloomberg, CNBC, BBC, and many other media outlets.

As former director of the Robotic Mobility Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), his research resulted in more than 150 technical publications, 50 issued or filed patents, and numerous edited volumes, including books on the DARPA Grand Challenge and Urban Challenge autonomous vehicle competitions. Karl was named one of 2017’s “Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs” by Goldman Sachs and designated a member of the 2017 “Recode 100” list of technology influencers.

The Lyft Trial

The Lyft trial is incredible, and yet I was shocked to see how little it is being covered. I’m always following news on Cruise, Tesla and Inte’s Mobileye unit, as well as all the incredible Chinese companies in the field including Baidu’s Apollo program and of course Google’s Waymo.

The partnerships in the auto sector truly are incredible. There are so many variables in the AV industry. If you’ve read my work you know I’m a massive fan of Wayve in this area.

Wayve Partners with Microsoft to Scale Autonomous Vehicles

So let’s dive into the heart of the topic.