April 27, 2024

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[THE INVESTOR] Hyundai Motor Group has tapped a former General Motors researcher to head its newly opened center for autonomous cars, the company announced on Feb. 13.

Lee Jin-woo, 47, who was a lead researcher of GM’s future autonomous driving vehicle project for more than a decade, has immediately taken up his new post to oversee the Intelligent Safety Technology Center -- a combined research body for Hyundai Motor and its smaller affiliate Kia Motors. 

“I will make greater effort to develop a self-driving platform with global applicability and go beyond developing driverless cars, so that Hyundai and Kia will play a leading role in standardizing global autonomous technology,” Lee said in a statement released by the automaker.

The newly established research and development center will focus on developing fully autonomous cars, as well as conduct research into artificial intelligence based driverless car technologies, the company said.

Lee now shoulders responsibility for steering Hyundai toward its next phase of growth as South Korea’s largest automaker aims to roll out autonomous cars in the market by 2020, in an attempt to catch up with global rivals in the self-driving car race.

Last week, Ford announced it will invest US$1 billion over the next five years in a new autonomous car unit Argo, with the goal of launching commercial self-driving cars by 2021. GM also paid US$1 billion to buy driverless startup Cruise Automation, while Toyota pledged to invest US$1 billion in its self-driving research center.

Lee, after graduating from Seoul National University, earned a doctorate at KAIST in mechanical engineering. He conducted research in driverless car and robotics project at Cornell University before working for GM in 2006.

By Ahn Sung-mi (sahn@heraldcorp.com)