▲ Kakao Mobility CEO Ryu Geung-sun delivering a keynote speech at the Global Mobility Conference
Kakao Mobility CEO Ryu Geung-sun emphasized that to commercialize autonomous driving, cities need to design city-wide operating systems alongside vehicle technology.
In his keynote speech at the 2026 Global Mobility Conference co-hosted by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, the Korea Transportation Safety Authority (TS), and the International Transport Forum (ITF) under the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) today (Sept. 7), CEO Ryu stated, "Autonomous vehicles drive alone, but autonomous driving services must be built together."
Ryu diagnosed that the commercialization of autonomous driving goes beyond applying driving technology to existing vehicles, marking a massive shift that transforms services and urban infrastructure as well.
He suggested, "Even with the same technology, changing the city introduces a different 10 percent of challenges," adding, "The evaluation criteria for autonomous driving services should shift from how well a single car drives to how hundreds of them are operated within a city."
Separately, Kakao Mobility revealed that 97 percent of users of its late-night autonomous driving service in Gangnam used the existing Kakao T app without installing a separate application.
The company also explained that the vehicle utilization rate recorded 82.5 percent.
Amid the major transition period toward the commercialization of autonomous driving, Ryu repeatedly emphasized that, just as roads, traffic lights, and crosswalks were established to match vehicle adoption, urban spaces, infrastructure, and safety rules must evolve together in the era of autonomous driving.
He continued, "Based on our mobility technology development experience and platform operation capabilities accumulated over the past decade, we will contribute to making autonomous driving a daily transportation service through public-private cooperation."
Additionally, Kakao Mobility shared that it has internalized core technologies such as high-precision maps and integrated AI models while directly operating autonomous vehicles, and plans to build an autonomous driving ecosystem cooperation model moving forward.
(Photo provided by Kakao Mobility, Yonhap News)
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