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| Fig. 1: Traffic Jam in Busan, South Korea. (Source: Wikimedia Commons) |
In recent years, electric vehicles have been more widely distributed around the world. As many countries including members of the European Union and the United States join this trend of implementing eco-friendly vehicles, South Korea also has been attempting to reduce greenhouse gas by developing electric vehicles. The need for electric vehicle development is pressing and imperative as transportation takes up more than 20 percent of fossil energy in South Korea, and traffic jams such as the one in Figure 1 are rather common, showing the overwhelming use of vehicles. Transportation continues to grow as the country has advanced rather rapidly from the 1980s, still growing at a fast rate. [1]
Only a few years ago, due to a limited supply of electric cars in South Korea, there was no considerable interest in electric vehicles. However, as the interest in electric cars started to rise as the market began to grow continuously, researchers have been analyzing the market and providing certain policies. [2] In this paper, we explore the different methods South Korea has taken in order to develop electric vehicles and emphasize the need for a better set of solutions to reach its goals of EV deployment.
First of all, electric vehicles can help create a sustainable society by replacing internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. Unlike ICE vehicles that need petroleum-based fossil fuels in order to operate, electric vehicles run on electricity, and an increase in electric vehicles would suggest a greater reliance on the power market. [2] And one of the problems that need to be addressed by the government or responsible organizations is the fact that electric vehicles do not necessarily indicate improvement of sustainability as we must account how sustainable power is in the respective country. [3] For an on-road test of approximately 50km, two models of EV AGV Connect and Peugeot iOn each consumed 138 and 192 Wh/km respectively. [4] That said, the goal of the government, organizations, and companies is not simply to increase the number of electric vehicles and to slowly replace ICE vehicles. What they must put their hands on is to create a set of policies that will successfully analyze and take into account the relationship between the power market and the diffusion of electric vehicles. In doing so, it can help develop South Korea's EV market.
Starting in the early 2000s, South Korea attempted to encourage the automobile industry by passing the Law for Eco-Friendly Cars R&D in 2004, Law for Low Carbon-Green Growth in 2010, and Law for Sustainable Transport Development in 2011. These three laws have been revised within the next few years, and in their own ways, they aim to develop the automobile industry while addressing EV deployment in Korea. These laws outline and reinforce specific regulations or responsibilities that need to be followed to develop the electric vehicle market. However, despite these policies and laws to implement the EV market in South Korea, the country's target for the number of electric vehicles was hardly reached. Although the target by year 2014 was between 30,000 and 40,000, its actually EV deployment remained in the thousands, only 8.7% of the target number. Thus, its EV deployment plan in 2010 that aimed to provide one million EVs by 2020 was revised from one million to 200 thousand. [1]
In conclusion, these studies show that the laws and policies that are currently in place to expand the electric vehicle market are insufficient since the goals that South Korea has set for the number of electric cars have not been met. This current state of electric vehicles in South Korea must be improved since the matter is not simply about the number of vehicles but how well the government, organizations, and companies will accomplish their parts and responsibilities to establish a sustainable future for South Korean transportation.
© Yu Jin Choi. The author warrants that the work is the author's own and that Stanford University provided no input other than typesetting and referencing guidelines. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.
[1] S. K. Hwang, "Comparative Study on Electric Vehicle Policies between Korea and EU Countries," World Electr. Veh. J. 7, 692 (2015).
[2] D. Shim, et al., "Key Features of Electric Vehicle Diffusion and Its Impact on the Korean Power Market," Sustainability 10, 1 (2018).
[3] L. Lambilliotte, "How Green are Electric Cars? ," Physics 240, Stanford University, Fall 2015.
[4] M. El Baghdadi et al., "Electric Vehicle Performance and Consumption Evaluation," World Electr. Veh. J. 6, 30 (2013).
