Aju Business Daily

SEOUL -- LG Chem, a petrochemical and battery-making arm of South Korea's LG Group, teamed up with GS Caltex, a major domestic refiner, to work together for the development of electric vehicle battery services utilizing big data collected from charging stations in cooperation with other companies involved in the electric vehicle industry.

LG Chem and GS Caltex signed a memorandum of understanding to develop battery safety diagnosis services and discover new services such as smart charging and predicting the remaining life of batteries. They would complete a demonstration project by 2021 and expand their services to overseas markets a year later.

Other partners involved are Soft Berry which is a big data solution provider for charging, Green Car which is a software company, KST Mobility which is a smart mobility company, and Signet EV which is a spin-off of Signet Systems, a global leader in charging solutions for automotive and industrial applications.

At GS Caltex charging stations, data will be stored in the cloud, and LG Chem's big data and battery service algorithms will analyze the current state and risks of batteries. Drivers can check battery conditions through mobile phones installed with Soft Berry's software and Signet EV's charger panel.

By 2022, GS Caltex plans to establish a network of more than 160 fast chargers. "Electric vehicle charging businesses should provide various services based on charging stations," said Kim Jung-soo, a senior managing director at GS Caltex, which has unveiled a roadmap to utilize gas stations as the hub of a total logistics system including drone delivery, car-sharing, parcel delivery services by vehicles and hydrogen fuel and electricity charging services for eco-friendly cars.

In June, GS Caltex demonstrated the use of delivery drones to carry lunchboxes and drinks from a gas station that served as the last-mile logistics hub in a government-led project to utilize unmanned aerial vehicles in the delivery of parcels and daily necessities to remote areas with limited accessibility.