At a warehouse just south of the Strip, dozens of electric cars are parked neatly in rows.
The Hyundai Ioniq 5 cars — capable of operating autonomously — belong to Motional, a joint venture between automaker Hyundai and a company called Aptiv.
Motional has seven locations worldwide, including one in Las Vegas. Its Southern Nevada facility is its largest, with between 250 and 300 employees, said Abe Ghabra, Motional’s chief operating officer.
Motional has a fleet of autonomous-capable taxis that has been operating on Las Vegas roadways — mostly along the Strip — for four years. They come with drivers at the ready to take control of the car if need be.
Beginning next year, the company will operate its Ioniq 5 cars without a backup driver, Motional representatives said.
Rides will be offered, as they are now, through a ride-hailing service like Lyft or Via.
Motional has been testing fully autonomous cars in Las Vegas without passengers. At a command center, employees sit in cubicles in front of a large screen that shows which vehicles are active in Las Vegas in real time.
In 2019, the year before the coronavirus pandemic hit, 42 million visitors flocked to Las Vegas. Close to half of Las Vegas visitors arrive by air and need a way to get around once they land.
Motional officials don’t just see their fleet as people-movers but also as delivery vehicles.
In California, where Motional has a facility in Santa Monica, the company has partnered with Uber to test a pilot program where Uber Eats customers receive deliveries via Motional cars.
Uber has partnered with another autonomous vehicle company, Serve Robotics, for a similar program in West Hollywood.
Uber and Motional representatives couldn’t say whether a similar program might be planned for Las Vegas.
When it arrived in Las Vegas in 2018, Motional, then using the Aptiv name, had only about a dozen employees. The company hopes to expand its Las Vegas workforce by about a third this year.
Motional has about three-dozen job openings in Las Vegas posted on its website. About half of those jobs include the word “engineer” in their description.
Motional thinks a retooling of the way people get around Las Vegas can help with problems like pollution and roadway safety.
As gas prices have soared this year — the price of a gallon of regular unleaded is now over $5 — there has been renewed interest in electric vehicles.
“We see driverless technology helping to mitigate the impact of climate change on our communities,” Ghabra said. “Our new fleet of (Ioniq 5) robotaxis are not only autonomous but also fully electric. We think that by combining electrification and autonomy, we can help revolutionize transportation.”
Last year, Nevada lawmakers moved to enact “clean car” regulations, which require auto manufacturers to comply with certain vehicle emission standards. Beginning Jan 1., manufacturers were eligible to earn credits for supplying qualifying low- and zero-emission vehicles to be sold in Nevada.
California officials previously announced a plan that would require every vehicle sold in the state to be a zero-emission model by 2035.
This year, Nevada joined a multistate agreement designed to accelerate the electrification of certain vehicle models in the next two-plus decades.
“Electric vehicles, that’s clearly where we’re moving,” said Nevada Assemblywoman Rochelle Nguyen, a Democrat from Las Vegas. “Vehicle emissions, that’s probably the No. 1 problem with air quality in the (Las Vegas) Valley.”
Clark County Commissioner Justin Jones praised the work of Motional and other local entities, including the county and the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada, for the expansion of electric vehicle fleets and the addition of charging stations around the valley. Jones sits on the RTC’s board of directors.
Still, folks like Nguyen and Jones, who spoke at a conservation event at Motional’s headquarters on Tuesday, understand a lack of charging stations can be a deterrent to the possible purchase of an electric vehicle.
There’s also the question of supplying the energy to charge electric vehicles.
“A lot of folks don’t necessarily think about how challenging it is to get enough power into a building like ours to charge all these vehicles,” said Nick Greif, a senior public policy manager for Motional.
“There are a lot of pipes that have to come in to bring all that power from the transmission station to here. We have to work closely with our Nevada utilities in order to do that,” he said.
Companies like Motional are betting that in the future people will be more likely to use an autonomous car service to get around and won’t necessarily own or lease their own vehicle.
“Autonomous vehicles allow us to change the way we think about transportation,” Greif said. “People will be able to subscribe to a fleet of cars, and the cars can come pick someone up, drop them off, then go pick someone else up. It would end the need to have that expensive asset that just depreciates in a person’s garage.”
Jones said it’s a vision worth working toward.
“As we look forward, we have to look not to what’s next year, but what’s next decade,” he said. “We can continue to be a leader on transportation here in Southern Nevada.”