“Mercedes-Benz Korea announced on the 9th that they will strengthen their capabilities to provide optimized mobility solutions in the Korean market as they celebrate the 10th anniversary of the establishment of ‘Mercedes-Benz R&D Korea Center,’ a domestic research and development (R&D) facility.
The Benz’s domestic R&D center was established in 2014 to flexibly meet the needs of Korean customers and quickly launch localized products. They celebrated their 10th anniversary with an event held at Hotel NARU Seoul M Gallery in Mapo-gu, Seoul on the 23rd of last month.
Matthias BAIPL, CEO of Mercedes-Benz Korea, expressed his pleasure at establishing a firm position as a leading company in the future mobility era by enhancing cooperation with Korean companies and continuous research and development over the past 10 years. He said, “As we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the establishment, we will continue to make steady efforts to develop products and services tailored to the needs of Korean customers.”
The R&D center has been conducting various projects over the past 10 years, such as equipping and optimizing domestic applications in vehicles, localizing navigation systems, applying Benz software patches in Korean, and localizing advanced driving assistance systems.
In particular, in the past three years, they have collaborated on technology development with domestic IT companies such as KT, LG Electronics, LG Display, T Map Mobility, NHN Bugs, Kakao Entertainment, Dreamus Company, Wave, and others for enhancing the infotainment system. They have also been fostering the growth of over 40 promising startups through a startup nurturing program held annually since 2019 with the startup innovation platform Auto-Part.
Furthermore, since expanding the office space and research personnel by about twice in the past 6 years through continuous scale expansion, approximately 70 researchers are currently contributing to the development of advanced driving assistance systems and improving vehicle stability at two hubs in Seoul.
A Mercedes-Benz Korea official stated, “Our future plans include not only enhancing the quantitative and qualitative research and development capabilities but also introducing autonomous driving technology in Korea, expanding the startup ecosystem through the discovery and collaboration of promising startups, accelerating local software development in the field of digital innovation, and achieving advanced software design.”