With SKT’s participation, Korea now has a three-way competition to get into the flying car market.

The fight for the top spot in South Korea’s flying car industry heated up on Tuesday, when SK Telecom announced its offer by forming a consortium with local firms.

The country’s largest telecoms firm has submitted a business plan to participate in the K-UAM Grand Challenge, a government-led competition to choose a business operator for urban air mobility. The telecommunications-led coalition is the latest in a long line of companies seeking for a piece of the lucrative sector, which is anticipated to be worth more than 1,800 trillion won ($1.4 billion) by 2040.

Ahead of SKT, Hyundai Motor Group and Kakao Mobility have each formed partnerships with related companies aiming to work with the government on UAM demonstration tests and to launch a commercial service in 2025.

By forging a partnership with Hanwha Systems, Korea Airports Corp. and Korea Transport Institute, SKT will leverage its expertise in operating 5G and 4G information and communications technology services to establish a real-time communications environment for UAM. Stable and reliable connectivity between aircrafts and ground infrastructure is vital in airspace, according to officials. The other focus of its UAM business will be forming a system for UAM traffic near vertiports for takeoffs and landings. This will be done through designing 3D maps and real-time downloading of climate information, it added.

Considering that the SKT-led consortium’s Hanwha Systems has already conducted a test on its UAM aircrafts, co-developed with US manufacturer Overair, some say that SKT is an inch ahead compared to its competitors.
As SKT partners with experts in UAM body and conduct research, Hyundai Motor Group has formed a partnership with players in diverse fields — Korean Air, KT, Incheon International Airport Corp. and Hyundai E&C — with an aim to build a UAM ecosystem.

Highlighting its expertise in vehicle manufacturing, Hyundai Motor is expected to make use of its global network through Supernal, its US-based UAM division. It will develop a product that can fit the global standard with leading market players like UK’s Altitude Angel, Germany’s Skyroads and the US’ OneSky.

The Hyundai-led consortium also plans to have the country’s largest air carrier Korean Air and No. 2 telecommunications firm KT build and conduct research on a 5G-based UAM traffic management system along with IIAC.

This system will run UAM operations and airport shuttles. Hyundai E&C will build vertiports, areas designed specifically for UAM aircraft to take off and land.

Putting its expertise in accumulated transportation data and mobility platform operation experience as its biggest asset, Korea’s top IT firm Kakao Group’s taxi-hailing service division Kakao Mobility has also stepped into the UAM business.

By forming a consortium comprising of LG Uplus, GS Caltex, domestic drone solutions company Pablo Air, low-cost carrier Jeju Air, and British UAM manufacturer Vertical Aerospace, it has recently announced that it will use GS Caltex’ network of gas stations to secure locations for vertiports.

Kakao Mobility will collaborate with LG Uplus and Jeju Air to create a solution for automated check-ins and security checks in sync with a traffic management system and platform. British firm Vertical Aerospace will create UAM aircrafts. The firm has already received some 1,350 preorders globally.

Though not considered as among the top 3, Lotte Group has formed its own consortium with Chicago-based gyroplane manufacturer Skyworks Aeronautics to make UAM vehicles. It has also gotten California-based Mobius.energy on board to develop battery modules. The consortium aims to run UAMs that connect Incheon Airport to Jamsil — the neighborhood in Seoul where Lotte World Tower is located — by 2024.

Who’s in the lead?

Though SKT’s UAM technology has not been tested publicly, some market experts view it as in the lead since it has partnered with a market pioneer, US aviation manufacturer Joby Aviation. SKT has also made it clear that it would bring Joby’s UAM aircraft S4 to Korea, which can fit four passengers and travel up to 240 kilometers on a single charge. S4 has gone through over 1,000 rounds of test flights with a top speed of 320 kilometers per hour. It has also performed NASA’s UAM demo test as a test flight.

Other experts also viewed that Hyundai Motor Group’s latest announcement to inject $5 billion to collaborate with US firms in the fields of robotics, UAM, autonomous driving and artificial intelligence will lay significant groundwork for the automaker to make speedy decisions in terms of materializing UAM technology in the local market.

“There is a huge gap between the US and South Korea in terms of technological advancement when it comes to future mobility like UAM, which makes it inevitable for Korean firms to develop related technology in the US and bring it and apply to the local market. This puts firms (with close partnerships in the US) in an advantageous position to preoccupy the UAM market here,” said Lee Hang-koo, a senior researcher at the Korea Automotive Technology Institute.

Some said with the absence of concrete legal regulations or infrastructure for the UAM business in Korea, it is still early to tell who will make the earliest launch of the service here.

Firms also declined to comment on the progress of their UAM business models, saying their service operations are still at a nascent stage and related technology development has been conducted internally, including the development of UAM aircraft.

According to the Transport Ministry, based on the business model proposals submitted by the firms, it will select a single UAM business operator who will work with the government over the next few years on demonstration tests of UAM flights and checking the validity of telecommunications infrastructure for UAM operations in the sky. Based on the evaluation results, the selected business operator will run the actual service in urban areas in 2024, prior to its commercialization in 2025.

By Kim Da-sol (ddd@heraldcorp.com)