Karl Iagnemma, the leader of Motional, a company working on self-driving cars, is stepping down. He will become a special advisor instead. Laura Major, the Chief Technology Officer, will take over as interim CEO.
The company didn’t say why Iagnemma is leaving, but a source told TechCrunch that it’s a friendly departure. In a statement, Iagnemma said he’s proud of the progress Motional has made in developing safe self-driving cars.
Iagnemma has been a major figure in the self-driving car industry. He and his colleagues worked on robotics and self-driving car research at MIT, and they even won a competition sponsored by the US military in 2007. Iagnemma went on to found Nutonomy, a company that worked on self-driving cars. In 2013, Nutonomy became the first to offer a public trial of a self-driving car service in Singapore.
Motional was formed in 2019, when Hyundai and another company called Aptiv joined together to develop self-driving cars. Iagnemma took the top role. Since then, Motional has made progress on its plans to launch a self-driving taxi service, but it has also faced challenges. The company had to cut staff and delay its plans to launch a self-driving car service.
In May, Hyundai invested $1 billion in Motional, giving them the money they needed to continue working on their technology. However, this came with some changes, including laying off some employees and putting their self-driving car service on hold until 2026. The company also ended its trial delivery service using self-driving cars.
