▲Yoo Min-sang, Managing Director of Autonomous A2Z, is giving a presentation at the Future Mobility Forum seminar.


Argo AI, which attracted 5 trillion won in investment, shuts down, and investment in autonomous driving is expected to shrink
Parallel support policies for creating an autonomous driving industry ecosystem are important
The automobile industry is generating revenue through autonomous driving SW subscription services

In order to preempt and service autonomous driving technology, organizations such as the Ministry of Science and ICT and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport are making efforts and investing, and companies are conducting R&D and verification, but it seems that profits will not be generated until after 2027, and there are voices in the industry saying that it is important to create conditions for the autonomous vehicle industry to survive until commercialization.

Yoo Min-sang, managing director of Autonomous A2Z, said at the '2022 Korea Automobile Journalists Association Symposium' hosted by the Korea Automobile Journalists Association in October, "Even if regulations on Level 4 autonomous vehicles are enacted in 2025, it will likely be after 2027 that certification will be obtained, sales will begin, and companies will be able to generate profits." He added, "It is important to create conditions for the autonomous vehicle industry to survive until the commercialization of Level 4 autonomous vehicles."

For autonomous driving companies, this means having to endure more than five years without making any profits.

Currently, autonomous driving related startups and companies are receiving investment from institutions and large corporations. You can focus on technology development, but it is not something that can be run solely on investment.

The closure of Argo AI, which received nearly $5 billion in investments from Ford and Volkswagen, has raised further questions about the profitability of autonomous driving.

Argo AI began investing with the dream of autonomous driving level 4 in 2022, but commercialization was delayed due to safety issues, and after just 6 years, it became history.

According to Reuters, Ford CEO Jim Farley said regarding Argo AI, "We will shift our development focus from fully autonomous driving systems to Ford's ADAS," adding, "We have concluded that fully autonomous driving is a long way off from being profitable and that we do not necessarily need to build the technology ourselves."

It then reported a pretax loss of $2.7 billion on its investment in Argo AI, resulting in a net loss of $827 million in the third quarter.

The autonomous driving industry, facing reality, also predicts that Argo AI's closure could freeze investment in autonomous driving.

Cruise, one of the world's leading autonomous driving companies, is also recording a loss of 6.9 billion won per day.

The reason for investing in autonomous driving despite the huge deficit is because the market potential is great.

At the Future Mobility Forum seminar held by Gangwon-do and the Future Mobility Forum on the topic of the Mobility Specialized City (M-city) last November, Yoo Sang-moo emphasized, “Although various equipment such as lidar are being domestically produced, the price of autonomous vehicles has dropped to around 300 million won compared to before, but the current autonomous taxi fare of 1,000 won does not even bring in 1 million won in annual income.” He added, “It is very important to support policies to create an industrial ecosystem so that autonomous driving can become Korea’s future national competitiveness.”