News: Hyundai & Start-up Canoo Team for EV Platform

Skateboard EV To Underpin Future Products

While traditional automakers have been known to scoff at the dreams of start-up companies looking to move into the automotive space, recent times have shown a new path of partnership. The most recent hook-up is Hyundai Motor Group and Canoo, a Los Angeles-based company that recently showed a proof-of-concept of its autonomous shuttle van-like vehicle. The skateboard platform Canoo has developed will be used in future Hyundai and Kia EVs and Purpose-Built Vehicles (PBV), a term used to incorporate vehicles built specifically for use with mobility services, either autonomous or with a driver, where the focus is on passenger amenities.

The Hyundai investment follows a developing trend in the industry. Ford invested in Rivian, an electric truck start-up, and GM purchased Cruise, a San Francisco start-up building autonomous cars. Earlier, both Daimler and Toyota invested in Tesla to gain access to its technology, which was used in a limited production of vehicles for both manufacturers.

Hyundai said it expects this new platform to allow for a simplified and standardized EV development process, which will lead to lower vehicle prices, a key goal for all automakers. The Canoo investment, which wasn’t quantified by either party, was characterized by Hyundai as a “doubling down” on the company’s commitment to invest $87 billion over the next five years. That investment was defined as  $52 billion to be spent by Hyundai on future technologies and $25 billion by Kia on electrification and mobility technologies. The company aims to have 25 percent of its total sales in 2025 be of “eco-friendly” vehicles.

PBVs Are Coming

Hyundai and Kia have both said they intend to produce PBVs as well, with Hyundai showing a conceptual vision of how those type of vehicles might be integrated into a new mobility system at CES in January. That event also featured a collaboration with Uber Elevate and its autonomous drone shuttles.

The attraction of the collaboration with Canoo also addresses another issue often mentioned as a weakness of traditional OEMs—speed.

“We were highly impressed by the speed and efficiency in which Canoo developed their innovative EV architecture, making them the perfect engineering partner for us as we transition to become a frontrunner in the future mobility industry,” said Albert Biermann, head of research and development, Hyundai Motor Group. Canoo said it reached beta-testing phase within 19 months of the inception of the company’s product program. The company plans to launch its first vehicle, which will be available by subscription only, in 2021. It is designed as a shared use, autonomous electric vehicle.

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