Socar will set up an independent company dedicated to autonomous driving services in May. Socar said on Wednesday it will spin off a unit to commercialise autonomous driving based on its car-sharing platform capabilities. The investment size is 150 billion won, which the company said is the largest level in South Korea's autonomous driving services sector. Socar CEO Park Jae-wook (박재욱), who has overseen the new autonomous driving business since January, will also serve as head of the new entity and lead the business directly.

Krafton will participate as a strategic investor. It will invest 65 billion won in Socar through a third-party allocation paid-in capital increase to join as a major shareholder, and will also make a separate investment in the new entity. Socar plans to contribute cash and data assets after a future board resolution.

The core competitiveness of the new entity is autonomous driving data Socar has built up over 15 years. Socar's Future Mobility TF built a centralised data pipeline in the first quarter that collects about 1.1 million km of real-time driving data a day, based on a 25,000-vehicle car-sharing fleet. The collected data is processed through anonymisation, time synchronisation and tag labelling so it can be immediately used for autonomous driving AI training.

It has also secured edge-case data, including accident data totaling 220,000 cases. Socar will use those data assets as a key element in advancing autonomous driving AI models and focus投入 them into the new entity.

The new entity will gradually expand its business scope, starting with an L2 (Level 2) car-sharing service. Its ultimate goal is B2C services such as ride hailing based on fully autonomous L4 (Level 4) driving. The company said it also plans to pursue partnerships at home and abroad while pursuing in-house technology and verifying it through real-world services.

Park said, "Our goal goes beyond simply completing autonomous driving technology to successfully commercialise it and fundamentally change users' travel habits and quality of life." He added, "Building on 15 years of data and operational know-how that Socar has developed through car sharing, we will create a new standard for the future mobility market."