Seoul to push cars and robots

The Korean government plans to invest 144.9 billion won ($149.2 million) this year to boost the development of high-tech areas that include fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles and new robots. The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said yesterday that it will offer financial help to public companies in buying hybrid-engine vehicles this year. The vehicles are expected have a fuel efficiency 50 percent higher than Hyundai Motor Co.’s passenger vehicle, Verna, which gets 12.3 kilometers (7.6 miles) on a liter of gasoline. The hybrid vehicle should travel 22 kilometers on the same amount of gasoline. The Commerce Ministry said it would supply 28 million won for each vehicle sold to public companies. The hybrid vehicle will retail for 33.6 million won. The manufacturers, however, have spent 100 million won to produce each vehicle, according to the ministry. “Local manufacturers lose more than 60 million won every time they sell a hybrid car, yet they continue to build those vehicles to secure a technological base in the field,” a ministry official said. The Japanese car manufacturer Toyota, the ministry said, was estimated to have lost more than 11 trillion won in producing its hybrid cars in the last 10 years. The company exported 100,000 units last year. The ministry estimated that manufacturing costs of the vehicles would drop to 20 million won by 2009. It said it hopes that 4,170 units will be sold to public companies by 2008. In 2004, the public sector bought 50 hybrid vehicles; last year it purchased 312 units. In addition, the ministry said, it would introduce robots that are capable of performing search and rescue and other emergency operations later this year. The prototypes of the emergency robots would be placed in subway stations and other public areas. It said Korea would also roll out phase-change random access memory this year, which would replace flash memory chips now imported from the United States. The ministry said that the five key industries it is supporting this year could result in the creation of 28,000 new jobs in this country. by Lee Ho-jeong