South Korea, a country that has been in the forefront of many areas of technology in the past few decades, is now building the biggest “fake” city for testing autonomous vehicles. There are already a couple of cities, like the M-City in Ann Arbor that the University of Michigan has build, available for testing out these self-driving cars. Reportedly, there is a budget of 11 billion won, or about $9.7 million USD for this project. The facility will take up about 360,000 square meters, effectively making it the largest in the world.
This city, called K-City, is going to be available for companies like Samsung, SK Telecom, Naver, Hyundai and Kia for testing their self-driving vehicles. Samsung recently gained approval for testing out self-driving vehicles, and is just the latest tech company looking to get into this space. Samsung does also have approval from the South Korean government for testing their self-driving cars on the road. Samsung is a company that seems to have their hands in just about every area, from making components to smartphones, to tablets and even parts for cars (similar to LG, also from South Korea).
Self-Driving cars are starting to pick up in popularity, and just about every company you can think of are working on their own self-driving car. This includes Apple, Google, Uber, Lyft, Ford, General Motors, Samsung, and many others. Of course, car makers like Hyundai, and Ford both have advantages over tech companies, since they are actually building their cars. Self-driving vehicles are said to make the roads much, much safer than they currently are. And this is due to the fact that computers don’t fall asleep behind the wheel, and they also follow all of the rules of the road, which equates to less accidents on the road, and that also means much fewer deaths. Many tech companies like Google and Samsung are working on making the software and hardware to add to existing cars to make them autonomous. This way they aren’t building an entire car from scratch, something they definitely are not experienced at doing. The K-City in South Korea will definitely be a big help for Samsung, SK Telecom and other companies in South Korea.
