Kia is sending empty PV5s to Pangyo customers under remote control on 4G and 5G

Both reports say the approach costs less than full autonomy. The Korea Herald says that using existing telecommunications infrastructure and conventional vehicles can make it less costly than fully autonomous driving ^[14]. Seoul Economic Daily goes further and says it costs far less ^[15]. Neither report discloses a cost per vehicle, a cost per trip, a fleet size or how many cars one operator can handle, so for now the saving is an assertion in two press reports.

The savings the reports point to are a conventional vehicle and an existing network. Operators at external centers still drive the unoccupied cars over 4G or 5G ^[3], and a single rental has two such legs, one out to the user and one back to the depot, against one leg the customer drives ^[13]. If an operator is tied up for each unoccupied leg, a rental consumes two operator drives. If one operator can watch several cars at once, it consumes less.

The operator ratio could stay near one to one, and the gap against autonomy would then be narrower than advertised. A dropped connection on a moving car with nobody aboard could stall the regulatory review that the Korea Road Traffic Authority handles ^[5]. Full autonomy could also get cheaper faster than operator wages do. Our view is that remote driving is cheaper than autonomy in capital cost and unproven in operating cost. We would be wrong on that if the trial, which runs only to the end of the year ^[1], shows one operator covering several cars at once.

Kia's own role in this project is narrow. It supplies the PV5 and oversees the project while SUM develops the remote-driving solution ^[5]. The path to the pilot ran through field trials with Socar, KT and SUM across Jeju and Hwaseong in November ^[11] and a July memorandum with KT and SUM to pursue commercialization ^[12]. Asked about uses beyond car sharing, a Kia official said: "Remote vehicle operation can support not only car-sharing but also mobility support in areas with limited transport infrastructure and everyday convenience services" ^[8].