Socar's autonomous driving specialist subsidiary Apex Mobility has revealed an autonomous driving commercialization roadmap that begins with a driving data business and expands to level-4-based ride-hailing and robobuses.
Apex Mobility announced on the 28th that at the '2026 Autonomous Driving Industry Conference' held at Seoul COEX on the 27th, Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) Jang Hyuk unveiled these plans.
CSO Jang diagnosed that the "golden time" for South Korea's autonomous driving industry to secure competitiveness is within the next three years at most. This is because unmanned autonomous driving services are gaining momentum in the United States and China, and commercialization competition is accelerating in major cities such as London and Tokyo.
He explained that securing data has emerged as a core competitive advantage as autonomous driving technology shifts from operating based on high-precision maps and pre-set rules to an E2E (End-to-End) approach where AI integrates data from cameras, LiDAR, and other sensors to make driving decisions.
As the first step, Apex Mobility plans to process data accumulated by its parent company Socar through 15 years of car-sharing operations into a form that autonomous driving AI can learn from and simulate. It will also secure "edge case" data—scenarios difficult to capture in normal driving, such as accidents or unexpected situations.
The company is also expanding its own data collection efforts. It first unveiled an Ioniq 5 prototype equipped with LiDAR and seven omnidirectional cameras, and plans to increase the number of vehicles with added sensors—called "full sensor kits"—to directly collect high-resolution multimodal driving data.
The ultimate goal is level-4 autonomous driving services. Apex Mobility is preparing for AI-driven ride-hailing and route-based and demand-responsive transport (DRT) robobus operations.
Roles will be divided from the parent company Socar. Socar will introduce level 2+ to level 3 autonomous vehicles into its car-sharing service, while Apex Mobility will handle level-4 ride-hailing that requires no driver.
CSO Jang stated, "Our goal is for Socar and Apex Mobility to grow as a national representative autonomous driving mobility service provider that bridges between car-sharing driven by humans and fully autonomous AI-driven ride-hailing."
in TECH
