Obstacles to Smart Car Ecosystem
The era of smart cars, which exchange information with things in real time and autonomously drive at their own discretion, has come near, South Korea is now in trouble to create the domestic industry ecosystem. This is because the country has failed to secure core smart car technologies and parts manufacturing capacities and establish the cooperation systems between large, medium and small-sized firms and industries.
According to the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning on November 13, it held the discussion meeting to collect the industry's needs for establishing new policies on the 11th under the chairmanship of Vice-minister of Science, ICT and Future Planning Choi Jae-yoo. At the meeting, industry, academic and research experts expressed such concerns and stressed the needs for close responses.
Industry sources have continuously pointed out that the domestic car, electronic and information communications companies are so busy to compete for leadership that there is no quick cooperation and innovation in the industry like the United States, Europe and Japan. Such concerns came up again at the meeting. Baek Song-hoon, executive director of KT, said, “In order to activate connected services, in-vehicle information should be disclosed. The industry needs to cooperate to set up the standards.” Kim Ho-eung, chief executive officer of Renault Samsung Motors, also said, “Considering the development of integrating smart car-related services, we should come up with a comprehensive measure as individual company has workforce and physical limits.”
In this regard, Lee Jae-gwan, director of Korea Automotive Technology Institute, said, “We are carrying out the national policy projects in cooperation with governmental departments in a bid to localize core autonomous driving technologies, develop new integrating technologies and demonstrate integrating services.” In addition, governmental officials said that they are helping to train top-level experts in the smart car integration and design sector and develop infotainment services.
However, some say that it is not enough to usher the era of smart car by simply expanding technologies and industrial base. They stress that the national policy, social culture and infrastructure are needed as well. A high ranking official from the auto industry said, “Above all, the large-scale infrastructure, including the pilot roads which smart cars can actually run, but it is hard to establish it by individual companies. Governmental departments and industries should make joint investments. In order to commercialize driver-less vehicles, we need to make traffic laws related to autonomous cars, establish civil and criminal systems and insurance systems for accident and compensation and require the new driver education systems and licenses.