CES 2020 – Will South Korea Win The Mobility Race?

South Korea is aiming to become a leader in the next wave of transportation. The country has previously announced plans to commercialize self-driving cars by 2027. It also wants to produce over 6 million hydrogen cars and build 1 ,200 fuel stations across the country by 2040. As you can see, mobility was a huge trend at CES 2020, lots of companies and countries battling for market share. So is South Korea really ahead of them all? Let's take a look. QBI creates a valet parking system with cameras sensing the spaces and software guiding the movements. When you drop off in front of the shopping mall or hospitals, you just click the button on your app and the vehicle just automatically goes down in the buildings. It's the type of company that South Korea needs. You see, South Korea trails those of other countries when it comes to developing autonomous technology, keeping them from truly owning their self-driving future. When it comes to smart parking solutions or automated pilot parking systems, the German companies, Bosch and Daimler, Google and Waymo are regarded as the most innovative companies in the global markets. But they cannot still make a commercialization. yet because they need to have a lot of expensive sensors so what we want to do is to get away from that expensive sensors instead of them we will make a full use of in connections the Ada's camera and vision deep learning algorithm. The system is running a cooperation with SK Telecom's TMAP service which is the most widely used navigation app in Korea. SK Telecom has made major investments to support South Korea's 5G ambitions, along with Hyundai Motor Group and Samsung. Specifically, Hyundai says it will invest $35 billion on self -driving and alternative mobility ventures to bring South Korea closer to its goals. Now much of the work of those companies is coming together here in South Korea's K-City. This is an $11 million dollar project located just outside of Seoul, specifically- designed for autonomous vehicle testing. In addition, South Korea is in the midst of modifying all of its highways for self-driving cars. For example, there will be devices and traffic lights to inform the cars when the light changes color, and sensors in the road that relay the width of the highway to the cars. We heard from the mayor of Seoul about these initiatives during a CES presser. Seoul is adopting the smart city technologies to bring changes. to the services in the area closely related to the citizens' lives, air quality, transportation, parking, safety. It all comes as South Korea invests $60 billion into the future of its transportation with the promise to create jobs and revamp its economy. Right now, about 95% of the country's energy needs are imported, which is why South Korea is adamant in developing a so-called hydrogen-powered system. And so far, it appears to be paying off. From January to October of 2019, Hyundai accounted for 60 percent of global hydrogen fuel cell cars. However, keep in mind that hydrogen fuel cars still lag behind their battery electric counterparts in adoption worldwide. Plus, South Korea's build-out of its hydrogen refueling stations has been met without its In May, a hydrogen tank explosion at a fuel cell plant killed two people and left six And the government's decision to set retail hydrogen prices low in an effort to bring consumers on board has left many owners of the station struggling to turn a profit. Now on the autonomous car fraud, South Korea says it will allow car makers to sell a level three self-driving car come July 2020. A level three is capable of driving autonomously on a highway or designated road but demands a driver to intervene when he wants to change lanes. The car is also required to send an alert to the driver in the case of a collision. or emergency. South Korea claims it's the first country to adopt safety standards for the limited self-driving car. But we want to hear from you. Be sure to send us your questions with the link below. We'll do our best to get your answers and put together another video. Till then, I'm Diana Blass reporting for Current Insights.