Minister Joo Hyung-hwan of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) urged CEOs of Korean automakers to secure future competitiveness of the Korean automobile industry and create jobs.
“The global automobile industry fundamentally undergoes a paradigm shift like China’s rise in the electric vehicle market,” Minister Joo said in a meeting with CEOs of Korean automakers at the Conrad Seoul Hotel in Yeouido on Aug. 18.
The meeting was designed to diagnose the Korean automobile industry, which is struggling with the hard times, caused by the sagging emerging economies and work out response strategies. The Korean automobile industry saw automobile production and exports plunge 6.2 percent and 13.7 percent in July over the same period of last year, respectively.
Minister Joo explained such government support policies as strategies to nurture EV and hydrogen cars and develop self-driving cars as one of national strategy projects the government has recently come up. The government is seeking to expand tax credit for R&D outlay in such new industries as future cars, said Minister Joo, adding that he asked for automakers to make the most of the government support policies.
The automaker CEOs shared the view that they would be aggressive in investing in such future cars as EVs, hydrogen cars and self-driving vehicles and releasing new cars.
Hyundai Motor President Chung Jin-haeng said his company plans to pour money into production lines for fuel cells, core parts for hydrogen czars, in late 2016.
Kia Motors also plans to expand R&D investments into eco-friendly technologies. Renault Samsung said the company plans to release an ultra-small EV “Twizy” in late 2016 and announced a plan to commercialize a 1-ton EV truck.
Ssangyong Motor said it will put on the market EV models the company is now developing in two and three years.
Minister Joo said major automakers’ strikes resulted in disrupting production of an estimated 28,000 units and exporting $266 million, and he called for management and labor to join forces in exporting.
The participating CEOs demanded the swift legislation of a bill to provide tax credit to the junking of diesel-fueled cars, now pending for approval at the National Assembly. Earlier, The MOTIE, a ministry in charge of self-driving cars, decided to provide intensive support to reinvigorate the nation’s mainstay industries and create new markets of the future.
The paradigm of the automobile industry is shifting from internal combustion cars to self-driving electric vehicles, so autonomous cars is an area that needs maximum state resources and capabilities to seize the future car market ahead of others, said Kim Hong-joo, director in charge of industry technology development at the MOTIE.
Self-driving cars are forecast to take up a 75 percent share of the global new car market in 2035 and to have great ripple effects in related industries, including semiconductors and ICT, he added.
The MOTIE said it will collaborate with such ministries as the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) and the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP) to implement a national strategy project to nurture self-driving cars to catch up with changes and trends and rise to a global leader by making the most of the nation’s strengths — automobiles, ICT and semiconductor technologies.
Initially, the ministry plans to upgrade added values by intensively supporting the localization of such core parts as sensors, for which Korea depends on foreign imports, and system semiconductors. Eight core parts, including context-awareness cameras and radar/lidar systems, will be developed by 2019, the ministry said.
Korea will secure such system semiconductor systems for vehicles with massive growth potential as image processing and communications by 2021 by making the most of the nation’s superior semiconductor technologies.
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