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Uber has added another company’s autonomous vehicles to its growing robotaxi network. Hyundai’s Motional self-driving system for the Ioniq 5 is now available to hail a ride to and from the city’s five boroughs – with an in-car safety alert, for now.
Starting Friday, cars will pick up and drop off at Resorts World and the Encore hotel casino on the Strip, along with Westgate, which is near the Las Vegas Convention Center. Motional AVs will also provide rides to and from the Town Square shopping center near the city’s airport, as well as the edge of Downtown Las Vegas.
Uber and Motional said on Friday that they plan to expand the service area in the future, but did not provide specifics. As in other cities, there is no way to directly request a robotaxi ride. Customers have added one-to-one convenience by allowing self-driving cars within the Uber app.
The companies said they hope to be able to operate driverless cars in Las Vegas by the end of this year.
The Las Vegas launch is a major milestone for Motional, which found itself in trouble two years ago. Formed as a partnership between Hyundai and Aptiv, the company was behind its mission to launch a robotaxi service with Uber rival Lyft. Aptiv stopped getting funding for the joint venture, leaving Hyundai to decide whether to take the financial hit, or cut bait.
Hyundai decided to invest another $1 billion in Motional, where all the AV startups changed their products. lay off about 40% of the workforce. It also revamped the way it developed its autonomous vehicle technology. Like many other players in the industry, Motional decided to go for the neural network based approach.
“We saw that there is a lot of potential with all the progress that is being made within AI; and we also saw that although we have a safe, driverless system, there was a gap to find an affordable solution that could expand globally,” Motional President and CEO Laura Major said in a speech at the company’s location in Las Vegas during the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show. “And that’s why we made the very difficult decision to suspend our commercial operations, to slow down for a short period of time to speed things up.”
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Driving trends at major tech conferences in January looked promising, though some consumer-focused programs still felt underwhelming. Motional has been working on a robotaxi for several months starting in Las Vegas for its employees. It has already shared launch plans in several cities with Uber and Lyft.
For Uber, Motional is one of the world’s most popular vehicles. The giant has spent the last two years signing agreements with more than 25 companies around the world to bring autonomous vehicles to its platform. Just this week, Uber announced plans adding self-driving Nissan Leaf EVs to the network in Tokyo (run by UK autonomous car tech startup Wayve) and Zoox robotaxis at his show in Las Vegas later this year.
