Here’s what the world didn’t see when Hyundai Motor America Inc. showed off its first self-driving vehicle at the Los Angeles Auto Show last week: the recently formed IT Planning and Strategy “subdivision” that played a key role in the development of the concept car.
It’s new ground at the South Korea-based auto brand’s U.S. headquarters in Fountain Valley, which appears to be an industry trailblazer when it comes to integrating information technology into the design process.
“We’ve consolidated all of our IT operations under one group,” said Michael O’Brien, vice president of corporate and product planning and digital business. “Nobody else to my knowledge has done that.”
Teams for vehicle product and technology planning, IT operations and IT planning have been grouped together as a 30-member subdivision. The aim is to “align all of the IT spaces that have emerged” since cars began communicating with users some years ago. That includes the technology in the vehicle, as well as stuff in use at the corporate and dealer level.
“Our mission has now moved well beyond providing products to transport people from point A to point B,” said Hyundai Motor America Chief Executive Dave Zuchowski. “We no longer just build vehicles, we are in the business of providing consumer mobility.”
A reorganization that led to the IT group was done to “get all of our divisions to work together on these things because every single one of these projects affects everybody,” O’Brien said.
“Five years ago, the middle of your car was a radio and it really is a computer now,” he said. “In the old days—two years ago—we would talk about vehicle design and packaging, powertrain and key features, and we’d spend maybe a few minutes to an hour talking about the radio.
Designers and R&D teams now spend a third of their time talking about the “center stack area”—that middle section, which, now features a radio and much more, bringing “connectivity, audio and entertainment” to vehicles.
The IT subdivision also focuses on “exploring how do we move forward more into areas of mobility, how do we allow people to access transportation in different ways, how do we allow our cars to deliver more capability by connecting with third-party partners,” said Barry Ratzlaff, executive director of digital business planning and connected operations.
For example, “the connected vehicle platform is an assemblage of a whole bunch of third parties, internal computer capabilities, business partners we hired to do work with, as well as parties like Amazon,” Ratzlaff said. “Our [IT operations] team has the job of orchestrating the integration of all of those people to make the connected car work.”
The research and development team at Hyundai’s global headquarters in Seoul “should and must control the vehicle specifications, but they also provided us a connectivity protocol, that allows us to have a local server and a defined way of connecting with the car, and we are constantly working with them on how to connect with the car, what sensors are available, what data is available, and then from our server here locally, we have the freedom to explore integration with the third parties and other business services—what’s best for this market,” Ratzlaff said.
The U.S. operations last week unveiled its Autonomous IONIQ concept vehicle. The driverless version of the model—there’s also a standard version of the IONIQ—is the latest entrant in a growing field. More than 30 emerging and old-guard players ranging from Uber, Google and Tesla to Ford and GM have launched initiatives in the nascent, closely watched segment.
The Autonomous IONIQ is one of the few driverless concepts in development to feature a hidden LIDAR—or light detection and ranging—system in the front bumper, rather than on the roof. That eliminates a rooftop bump that’s generally viewed as giving driverless vehicles an ungainly look.
Other features of the IONIQ include forward-facing radar that detects the relative location and speed of oncoming objects for route planning; a three-camera alignment for detecting pedestrian proximity, lane markings and traffic signals; a GPS antenna that determines the vehicle’s precise location; high-definition mapping data supplied by in-house navigation software Hyundai MnSoft for location accuracy, road grade/curvature, lane width and other data; and a blind-spot detection radar to improve lane change safety.
“We look at using those sensors and doing more and more with them,” Ratzlaff said.
Hyundai is also developing its own autonomous vehicle operating system with the goal of using less computing power. The company is testing three autonomous IONIQs and two Autonomous Tucson Fuel Cell vehicles at its sprawling research and development campus in Namyang, South Korea, where more than 10,000 employees are based. A ride-sharing program using autonomous vehicles was launched in July at the campus.
The L.A. Auto Show was a primer for Hyundai’s pending appearance at January’s run of CES in Las Vegas, the world’s largest technology trade show. The company plans to exhibit two Autonomous IONIQ’s that will provide transportation for select media members, showcasing their navigational capabilities in highly trafficked pedestrian and vehicle areas, school zones, construction and road blocks, speed bumps, shopping centers and dog-friendly areas.
“We will have a big presence in and around CES and build upon that autonomous message,” Ratzlaff said.
