It Seems Hyundai Has A Solution For Waymo’s Door-Closing Problem

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A few days ago, I wrote about Waymo having a problem with passengers not closing robotaxi doors fully. It’s apparently paying towing companies $20 or so to go to these vehicles and close their doors.

Waymo reportedly said that it has a solution coming with future vehicle models that will have self-closing doors that are a bit like minivan doors. I assumed the company was referring to the coming Zeekr model that will be used in Waymo’s robotaxi service soon. However, it might not have been referring to the Zeekr/Ojai model. Perhaps it was a coming Hyundai.

Of course, Waymo has partnered with Hyundai to use IONIQ 5 vehicles, and those are coming soon as well, but they don’t have minivan-like doors. Hence the reason I assumed that this referred to the Zeekr vehicles. But now we get news that Hyundai has patented double-sliding car doors that were inspired by subway train doors. That sure rhymes with what I summarized above.

Here’s the patent abstract, published a couple of days ago: “A door open-close device for a vehicle configured to open or close a door opening portion by sliding and popping up a door formed in a vehicle body includes a driving unit configured to provide a driving force for sliding and pop-up operations of the door; a gear unit configured to receive the driving force from the driving unit and cause the door to pop up; a pulley-belt unit configured to receive the driving force from the driving unit and allow the door to slide; and a rail unit engaged to the pulley-belt unit, connected to the door and configured to provide a path for the door to slide by operation of the pulley-belt unit.”

Well, that’s clear, isn’t it?

Getting into the body of the patent, it starts off by describing different kinds of doors. Fun.

Then it eventually gets here: “According to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure, a door open-close device for a vehicle configured to open or close a door opening portion by sliding and popping up a door formed in a vehicle body includes a driving unit configured to provide a driving force for sliding and pop-up operations of the door; a gear unit configured to receive the driving force from the driving unit and cause the door to pop up; a pulley-belt unit configured to receive the driving force from the driving unit and allow the door to slide; and a rail unit engaged to the pulley-belt unit, connected to the door and configured to provide a path for the door to slide by operation of the pulley-belt unit.

“The driving unit may include a driving motor; clutches connected to the driving motor and configured to rotate by a rotation force of the driving motor; and an electromagnet to which electric power is supplied or blocked to transmit or block rotation forces of the clutches to the gear unit by selectively coupling the clutches.

“The clutches may include a lower plate coaxially connected to a motor shaft of the driving motor and configured to rotate in synchronization with a rotation of the motor shaft; and an upper plate coaxially coupled to the motor shaft and configured to rotate or not rotate according to whether to be in contact with the lower plate by the electromagnet.

“In response that the electric power is supplied to the electromagnet, the upper plate and the lower plate may be in contact with each other, and in response that the electric power is not supplied to the electromagnet, the upper plate and the lower plate may be released from contact therebetween.”

And it goes on and on. You can read the whole thing here or here.

Of course, the sketches alone are enough to get the message across. Aside from the ones above, here are a few more: