Kakao Mobility presented a vision that, to commercialize Autonomous Driving, it is necessary to build an ecosystem that spans services and urban infrastructure beyond vehicles and driving technology. The strategy is to move away from competition over the Autonomous Driving performance of individual vehicles and secure service operations optimized for urban environments.
Ryu Geung-seon, CEO of Kakao Mobility, stated accordingly in a keynote speech titled "Bringing Autonomous Driving technology into everyday travel" at the 2026 Global Mobility Conference held on the 7th. The Global Mobility Conference is 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). Kakao Mobility, Waymo, and Nvidia participated as keynote speakers.
Ryu emphasized that the commercialization of Autonomous Driving should not be limited to applying new technology to existing modes of transportation. Autonomous Driving must expand from driving technology to services and then to urban infrastructure for it to truly take root in citizens' daily lives.
He said, "New technology should not be the preserve of a few but be for all users," and added, "We need to make technology reach directly into people's daily lives."
Kakao Mobility is pushing to make Autonomous Driving services part of everyday life by combining its in-house Autonomous Driving technology with its experience operating a platform 24 hours a day. According to the company, 97% of users of the late-night Autonomous Driving service in Gangnam used the existing Kakao T app without installing a separate application (app). Fleet utilization reached 82.5%.
Ryu argued that, in step with the spread of Autonomous Driving, urban infrastructure and the transportation ecosystem must change together. Just as roads, traffic lights, and crosswalks were built when the primary mode of travel shifted from walking and horse-drawn carriages to cars, the urban environment and social infrastructure must be newly designed for the Autonomous Driving era.
He said, "Even with the same technology, when the city changes, you face a different 10% of hard problems," and added, "The criteria for evaluating Autonomous Driving services should shift from how well a single vehicle drives to how hundreds are operated within a city."
Kakao Mobility has internalized core Autonomous Driving technologies such as high-definition maps, simulators, control systems, and integrated artificial intelligence (AI) models, and is directly operating vehicles. Going forward, it plans to work with automakers, parts suppliers, public institutions, local governments, and academia to promote the development of service-customized vehicles and the stabilization of supply chains, the establishment of routes and safety standards, and the verification of end-to-end trip completion rates.
Ryu said, "An autonomous vehicle runs alone, but an Autonomous Driving service must be built together," and added, "Based on our decade-plus of accumulated experience in mobility technology development and platform operations, we will contribute—through public-private cooperation—to building a sustainable ecosystem in which Autonomous Driving becomes a routine transportation service."