Hyundai Motor and Kia said Monday they have been selected as the automaker and transportation platform operator for the government-led “K-autonomous driving cooperation model,” part of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport’s autonomous-driving test city initiative.
The project, to be carried out in the city of Gwangju, is South Korea’s first effort to test autonomous-driving technology at the city level. The ministry said the large-scale trials are expected to secure high-quality real-world driving data while standards for technology development and related regulations are updated in parallel.
Hyundai Motor and Kia were chosen to handle two areas in the demonstration: producing vehicles dedicated to autonomous-driving development and operating the transportation platform.
The companies said building development vehicles requires not only supplying cars but also adding sensors tailored to each autonomous-driving approach, integrating vehicle controls and enabling over-the-air updates, among other functions needed for development and verification.
Hyundai Motor and Kia said they have already built such capabilities by providing Ioniq 5-based autonomous vehicles in a foundry-style model to their autonomous-driving joint venture Motional and to Waymo’s robotaxi program.
In the Gwangju project, they plan to support production of development vehicles and share vehicle and operational data generated during the trials with developers to help advance the technology.
They also plan to deploy a dispatch and ride-hailing platform tailored for autonomous services based on their Shucle platform. The companies said Shucle’s core functions include AI- and real-time traffic-based route optimization, managing passenger pick-ups and drop-offs, and safety oversight through fleet monitoring.
Hyundai Motor and Kia said they have strengthened operational stability by providing call and dispatch services since 2019 across 33 local governments and more than 82 service areas.
Using Shucle in the demonstration, the companies said they aim to complete an integrated autonomous-service model that smoothly connects vehicles, the platform and users, and to lead efforts to build a new mobility experience and ecosystem.
“This demonstration is an important opportunity to verify Hyundai Motor and Kia’s integrated autonomous-driving capabilities in a real urban environment,” said Kim Su-young, an executive director in the companies’ mobility business division. “We will focus our efforts on advancing the technology so that a system in which vehicles, autonomous-driving technology and the platform are organically linked can be established, and the results can develop into scalable standards.”
* This article has been translated by AI.
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