Skip to main content

Self-driving cars will soon be tootling around their own ‘city’ in South Korea

Highlighting its goal to be a major player in the development of self-driving car technology, South Korea this week announced plans for K-City, a specially designed 88-acre site set to be the world’s largest test space for autonomous vehicles.

Slated to open this fall, K-City will comprise a network of roads and junctions that will give engineers more freedom for testing their technology in road conditions that mimic real-life scenarios.

Recommended Videos

K-City will be open to a slew of local tech firms — among them Samsung, SK Telecom, and Naver, as well as automakers such as Hyundai and Kia Motors — allowing them to test and develop their respective technologies, Business Korea reported.

The sprawling “city” is currently under construction and is expected to include expressways, bus-only lanes, zones for autonomous parking, and other features designed to help engineers work on improving autonomous driving technologies.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

While Samsung recently received permission to test its own technology on public roads in South Korea, likely using Hyundai’s Grandeur sedan (called the Azera in the United States), K-City would give engineers more freedom to carry out tests using different road scenarios and without disrupting “real” traffic or risking harm to regular drivers.

For sure, autonomous cars on public roads occasionally get into scrapessome more serious than others — but often the accident is the fault of a human driver puttering along in another car. Facilities like K-City could be particularly useful if engineers are keen to try out a new piece of car-related software before taking it out onto public roads, while Business Korea also points out that the site could be useful for the collection of large amounts of driving and road data, potentially benefiting urban planners and insurance companies.

Besides being a vital facility for the development of autonomous driving technology, K-City is also South Korea’s way of putting competing companies around the world on notice that it’s determined to be at the forefront of the platform’s development, spurring innovation by encouraging Korean firms to collaborate in one location.

In the U.S., the largest testing site similar to K-City is the University of Michigan’s 32-acre MCity facility, which is less than half the size of South Korea’s under-construction site. But both are set to be dwarfed by the American Center for Mobility at the historic Willow Run site near Detroit, Michigan, a facility that will cover a whopping 335 acres when it opens later this year.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Ford and VW close down Argo AI autonomous car unit
An Argo AI autonomous car on the road.

Autonomous-car specialist Argo AI is closing down after Ford and Volkswagen, Argo's main backers, ended support for the Pittsburgh-based company.

First reported by TechCrunch and later confirmed by the two auto giants, some of the 2,000 workers at Argo will transfer to Ford and Volkswagen, while others without an offer will receive a severance package. Argo’s technology is also set to end up in the possession of the two companies, though at this stage it’s not clear how it might be shared.

Read more
Ex-Apple employee pleads guilty to nabbing Apple Car secrets
The Apple logo is displayed at the Apple Store June 17, 2015 on Fifth Avenue in New York City

A former Apple employee on Monday pled guilty to the theft of trade secrets from the tech firm.

The material stolen by Xiaolang Zhang was linked to Apple’s work on its first-ever automobile, a project that’s been in and out of the headlines for years though never officially confirmed by the company.

Read more
A weird thing just happened with a fleet of autonomous cars
A passenger getting into a Cruise robotaxi.

In what must be one of the weirder stories linked to the development of autonomous vehicles, a fleet of Cruise self-driving cars gathered together at an intersection in San Francisco earlier this week, parked up, and blocked traffic for several hours. And to be clear: No, they weren't supposed to do that.

Some observers may have thought they were witnessing the start of the robot uprising, but the real reason for the mishap was more prosaic: An issue with the platform's software.

Read more