Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Opens Electric Vehicle Battery Subscription Service Market

[Asia Economy Reporter Ryu Tae-min] In the future, it will be possible to use electric vehicle battery subscription services, which is expected to significantly reduce the initial purchase cost for electric vehicle buyers.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced on the 1st that it held the "2nd Land and Transport Regulatory Reform Committee" on the 28th of last month and decided to prepare and promote regulatory improvement plans in the land and transport sector, including the introduction of electric vehicle battery subscription services.

On the 6th of last month, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport established the Regulatory Reform Committee composed entirely of 36 private members and granted it the authority to discover and improve regulatory issues in the land and transport sector. At this second meeting, it was decided to first improve the vehicle registration ledger to enable market entry for electric vehicle battery subscription services.

With the recent expansion of electric vehicle adoption, the specialized credit finance industry is planning to launch a battery subscription service, which is the most expensive and core component of electric vehicles. However, under the current "Vehicle Registration Decree," it is difficult to launch such products because only the ownership of the vehicle battery cannot be separately registered.

Accordingly, the Regulatory Reform Committee decided to revise the Vehicle Registration Decree within this year to allow the registration ledger to record cases where the battery owner is different from the vehicle owner. If the battery subscription service is launched, the initial purchase cost burden for electric vehicle buyers will be drastically reduced, which is expected to contribute to the expansion of electric vehicle adoption and the fostering of new industries related to batteries.

Additionally, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport reviewed difficulties arising from recent strengthening of energy-saving standards such as insulation, which have increased building floor thickness and floor height, making it difficult to construct three floors within 9 meters. It decided to revise the "Enforcement Decree of the Building Act" to raise the building height restriction standard to 10 meters. The Ministry expects that easing the height regulation will resolve issues such as the use of defective insulation materials caused by conforming to the 9m standard on site.

Furthermore, when general contractors and specialized contractors bid in mutually permitted markets, the detailed standards for construction project orders will be revised to allow performance verification and automatic evaluation through the electronic procurement system. Ten inspection items related to offices, applied when general contractors subcontract specialized work or specialized contractors subcontract general work to verify registration criteria of the counterpart industry, will be deleted. The Enforcement Decree of the Building Act will also be revised to prevent restrictions on specialized contractors’ ability to secure construction projects.

Moreover, the scope of cultural facilities that can be installed in urban parks will be delegated to local governments through ordinances to set them according to local circumstances within a range similar to already regulated cultural facilities, by revising related law enforcement rules.

In addition, regarding the regulation that mandates unscheduled subscription applications through "Cheongyak Home" when leftover units occur due to disqualification or contract termination in regulated areas, a reasonable improvement plan will be prepared following industry requests to allow project entities to dispose of such units at their discretion after a certain number of public recruitments.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport plans to promote amendments to related laws within this year for the tasks approved by the Regulatory Reform Committee and will continue to discover and improve regulatory issues through the committee in the future.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.