Kia says it has started a car-sharing pilot in South Korea where the van shows up with nobody inside, steered by a person somewhere else. The service began Thursday in Pangyo, Gyeonggi Province, uses the electric PV5, and runs until the end of the year, according to Electrek's report on Kia's announcement. Kia calls it the first car-sharing service in the country built on remote driving.
How the van reaches you
You reserve a PV5 in a dedicated app, and the van heads to your chosen spot without a driver aboard. Then you take the wheel yourself and drive as you like. When you're done, you park where it suits you, and a remote driver moves the van back to its garage over a 4G or 5G connection.
It's worth being precise here. The source describes a human operator driving at a distance, not a fully self-driving system, even though the van is described as driving itself to the customer. That is a different bet from robotaxis: it swaps the hard problem of machine judgment for the hard problem of reliable wireless links and trained operators. The pilot is meant to test exactly that, checking the technology and whether the service can run in real-world conditions.
Kia pitches it at businesses, saying it can make fleets more efficient and lighten the burden of owning vehicles. That is a company claim, and no usage, cost or safety figures have been published yet.
Who is involved
Kia supplies the vans and oversees the project. SUM develops the remote driving software, Mobiops runs the service, and the Korea Road Traffic Authority helps with regulatory reviews. Gyeonggi Province, KT, UMOS ONE, a research institute and the regional rental business association are supporting partners.
This follows a string of steps. Kia won a special exemption under the transport ministry's remote driving regulatory sandbox last April, formed a consortium with Socar, KT and SUM in November 2025, and signed an MOU with KT and SUM in July. That MOU aims to launch a commercial service within a year. Kia says it will use trial data to expand the service in 2027.
The source doesn't say how many vans are in the pilot, how many operators watch each one, or what happens if the connection drops. Those are the answers that will decide whether this scales. Everything above comes from Kia's announcement as relayed by one outlet, and we have not been able to confirm it with Kia, the Korea Road Traffic Authority or the operators, so treat the launch and the details as the company's account until they do.
Would you rent a van that a stranger drove to your door from miles away?
That's wattsup, and here's wattsnext.
Sources
Reported by the WattsUpNext desk from the sources linked below. Spot an error? Tell us at corrections@wattsupnext.com.
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