Hyundai, Kia to Enter Autonomous Car Market By 2030

The autonomous car is no longer a fantasy with such companies as Google and Tesla, making progress each year on their individual prototypes. Now Hyundai Motor Co. is entering the market by developing its own computer chips, sensors, and systems with its subsidiary, Kia Motors Corporation.

South Korea's largest automotive maker plans to introduce partially autonomous driving technologies by 2020 and then move into the fully autonomous car market by 2030. Kia will invest $2 billion until 2018 to produce systems that assist the driver by the end of the decade.

These assistant systems fall under the new Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) technology development. Eventually the progress made with these systems will lend themselves into fully autonomous systems.

Digital Trends described some of the assistant programs. One is a "Highway Driving Assist" that will automatically keep a safe following distance, obey speed limits, and pass cars without the help of the driver. It combines the features of adaptive cruise control with the functions of a lane-guidance system.

Another program that will help drivers is the "Remote Advanced Parking Assist System", which will take the driver out of the equation completely. When the driver isn't inside the car, she or he can just press a button on the key fob within a close distance of the vehicle to activate the program.

Kim Dae Sung, the director of Hyundai's automotive control system development group, said that in order for Hyundai Motor to install autonomous technologies into its cars, they currently buy them from affiliates and other suppliers, reported Bloomberg. This push into the partial and full autonomous market is encouraging them to create their own hardware.

Hyundai's belief that they will have self-driving cars available by 2030 is actually more conservative than other projections by other companies. Most automakers have been aiming for 2020 as the year of the autonomous car.

Taw-Won Lim, vice president of the Central Advance Research and Engineering Institute of Hyundai, had this to say about their 2030 projections.

"Fully-autonomous vehicles are still some way off, and a great deal of research and rigorous product testing will need to be carried out to make the 'self-driving car' a reality. Kia is still in the early stages of developing its own technologies, and we are confident that the latest innovations - both partially and fully autonomous - will ultimately make driving safer for everyone."