Yandex teams up with Hyundai Mobis for driverless cars

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's Yandex and Hyundai Mobis Co Ltd, an auto parts affiliate of Hyundai Motor Co, agreed to jointly develop control systems for driverless vehicles, Yandex said on Tuesday. The companies plan to present a driverless prototype vehicle based on a standard Hyundai or Kia production model cars before the end of the year, a Yandex spokesman said. In the future, the cooperation aims at building a new autonomous driving control system for car manufacturers, car sharing services and taxi fleets. Yandex added they may expand into other areas of cooperation such as developing joint products that would integrate Yandex's speech, navigation, and mapping technologies. The Russian company began testing self-driving prototypes in 2017 and launched a fully autonomous taxi service last year in the university city of Innopolis and the Skolkovo innovations center. (Reporting by Anastasia Teterevleva; Writing by Polina Nikolskaya and Maria Kiselyova; Editing by Louise Heavens)