Last May, in front of a building at the Namyang Research Center안전놀이터, the R&D headquarters of Hyundai Motor Group in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi-do. There were 8 cylindrical lidars each costing millions of won, 10 cameras the size of 100 won coins , and 5 high-performance radars. It is a self-driving car being developed by Hyundai Motor Group. On this day, this paper was the first to test-drive this car among domestic media.
Hyundai Motor Group will commercialize the world’s first ‘Level 3’ self-driving car that operates up to 80 km/h at the end of this year. Level 3 is that the car runs towards its destination on its own on all highways across the country, even if the driver does not hold the steering wheel at all. So far, only Japan’s Honda and Germany’s Mercedes-Benz have put Level 3 functions in cars sold to consumers. However, 60 km/h was the upper limit. Hyundai Motor Group broke through this wall.
Hyundai Motor Company and Kia Motors, which represent the Korean automobile industry today, were companies that only half a century ago remodeled cars imported from Japan or the United States and sold them to consumers. However, in the field of self-driving, which is called ‘the totality of advanced technologies’, it has begun to take the lead, overtaking GM (General Motors) , BMW , and future car icon Tesla with a history of 100 years.
Self-driving cars are called ‘supercomputers that run on their own’. AI that determines car movement by processing hardware such as lidar and cameras and various information(Artificial intelligence) Computing ability, high-speed communication technology, etc. must operate without errors. Autonomous driving is expected to spread beyond automobiles to robots, drones, and ships. Presidency Research, a global market research firm, predicted that the autonomous car market would grow from $170.1 billion (about 225 trillion won) this year to $1.8084 trillion (about 2400 trillion won) by 2030, a tenfold increase.