Kakao Mobility and Hyundai Motor Join Hands for Autonomous Driving Demonstration: "Pilot Service Within the Year"

[Asia Economy Reporter Yuri Choi] Kakao Mobility announced on the 19th that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Hyundai Motor Company for the "Demonstration and Commercialization of Autonomous Driving Mobility Services."

The two companies plan to discuss mutual cooperation plans to demonstrate various services and develop businesses utilizing autonomous driving technology. As the first step, they plan to launch an urban autonomous driving mobility pilot service within the year, allowing users to call and use Hyundai Motor Company's self-developed Ioniq 5 "RoboRide" through Kakao Mobility's "Kakao T" platform.

Kakao Mobility has accumulated navigation, taxi, and parking data and service know-how essential for autonomous driving technology development based on over 30 million cumulative subscribers of "Kakao T" and more than 22 million subscribers of "KakaoNavi." Based on this expertise, it has established cooperative systems with leading companies excelling in various autonomous driving fields such as autonomous driving, high-definition maps (HD Map), and monitoring/control.

This MOU is regarded as a cornerstone for evolving autonomous driving services from demonstration to commercialization. Starting with urban autonomous driving mobility services, Kakao Mobility and Hyundai Motor Company plan to expand the scope of cooperation to provide autonomous driving services through various vehicles in diverse environments in the future. The goal is to present a more complete autonomous driving service beyond simple demonstrations.

Jang Woong-jun, Executive Vice President of Hyundai Motor's Autonomous Driving Business Division, said, "Through this MOU, we expect to showcase Hyundai Motor Company's autonomous driving technology to more customers using Kakao Mobility's platform," adding, "The two companies will actively cooperate to enable customers to easily use RoboRide in their daily lives."

Jang Sung-wook, Vice President of Kakao Mobility's Future Mobility Research Institute, also emphasized, "This MOU marks a significant step forward in the domestic autonomous driving market as a collaboration between the top companies in each field in Korea," and added, "With Kakao Mobility's platform capabilities combined with autonomous driving technology, more citizens will experience autonomous driving services, laying the foundation for the commercialization of autonomous driving."

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