Kia’s Self-driving Cars to Hit the Road by 2030

It seems like every big automaker out there is hopping on the self-driving cars bandwagon. A few big names have openly announced their plans to build autonomous cars, Kia has just joined them

Kia Motors announced, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, that they are going to develop autonomous vehicles, but don’t expect them to pop up on the streets too soon.

According to their announcement, Kia will have fully operational self-driving cars by 2030. Yes, this is indeed quite a bit away, but it seems that the first semi-autonomous cars with driver assistance will be on the roads by 2020. While not fully standalone, they will have self-parking and automatic lane switching on the freeway.

Kia says it’s going to invest $2 billion by 2018, which is quite a lot and speaks about the importance of this sector for the Korean carmaker. The company is also working on other smart features for its cars, such as gesture control, fingerprint sensors, and smart-device connectivity.

Kia’s new division will be known as the “Drive Wise” brand, which is basically the company’s name for the advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). The first car which will be used for tests is a specially outfitted Soul EV, the company’s electric compact crossover.