Google's driverless cars, which have recently hit the road in the U.S. Silicon Valley, are not able to run in South Korea because the nation has different frequency band from the international standard, according to industry experts.
For the same reason, the unmanned cars which Hyundai is developing with an aim of rolling out in 2015 cannot be used overseas.
The state-run National Academy Engineering of Korea held a relevant seminar on Monday to present improvement on technology regulations and policy recommendations on South Korea's driverless vehicle industry.
One of the major technology regulations is frequency related to unmanned cars. Frequency is necessary for the vehicles as cars need to communicate with other vehicles, roads and servers to understand traffic situations. In other nations including America and the Europe, they use international standard of 5.9㎓ band for communications. Here, the band is used for communications for broadcasting vehicles as the government allocated the frequency band from 5.650 to 5.925㎓ to short range communications, including broadcasting and wireless data communications in 2001.
The band cannot be used together with V2X - vehicle to everything - as intervention will occur. This makes developers difficult as they have to make different vehicles for the domestic market and overseas market.
Lee Kwang-ho, chief of the research team at the Science & Technology Policy Institute, said, "The 5.9㎓ band should be allocated for driverless vehicles and other frequency should be allocated for the current broadcasting cars."
The shift of band is possible by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning but as it is facing opposition from media and communications industry, local companies related to smart cars are developing equipment separately for export and domestic market.
The lack of regulations on Energy Storage System, ESS, is also an issue to be overcome. In the U.S., ESS is designated as power generators similar to diesel generators or gas turbine generators but here, there is no relevant regulations for installation and operation of ESS. When using ESS, companies can raise energy efficiency by saving electricity and supplying when necessary. However, currently, companies and research centers are not able to use ESS as emergency generators as they are only limited to diesel generator and gas turbine generators.
Industry experts said the government should ease regulations and at the same time make necessary regulations in a bid to boost the industry.
"The government should make ombudsman comprised of industry and academic experts to actively find regulation improvement," said Lee Sang-hoon, a professor of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.
Meanwhile, the government is aiming to grow the driverless car market to 15 trillion won in sales by 2015 to account for 10 percent in the global market. It is thus ramping up its efforts to develop relevant technologies by unveiling a plan for reforming regulations to create new business." In April, the government designated some locations as exclusive areas for developing driverless vehicles. The unmanned vehicle technology is mainly divided in to four stages. When the car reaches the fourth level, it can freely drive on the road. Korea secures technology at the second level unlike other advanced nations already securing third level.
The Ministry of Transportation plans to reach the third level by improving regulations and infrastructure by 2020. For starters, they will map out a plan to allow pilot driving of unmanned cars and to make relevant insurance program.
Also, the government plans to support small and medium enterprises by helping them partner with relevant ministries and government agencies.
The global driverless car market is growing 20 percent on an annual average to reach $150 billion by 2025, according to industry experts.
