The road not taken: South Korea’s self-driving professor

Han explaining a specialist warning system for autonomous vehicles under development at his office in Yongin, south of Seoul. Decades before the race to build a self-driving car became a multi-billion-dollar contest between the likes of Tesla and Google parent Alphabet, a South Korean professor built an autonomous vehicle and test-drove 300 kilometres from one end of the country to the other – only for his research to be consigned to the scrapheap. — AFP

YONGIN, South Korea: Decades before the race to build a self-driving car became a multi-billion-dollar contest between tech giants such as Tesla and Google, a South Korean professor built an autonomous vehicle and test-drove it across the country – only for his research to be consigned to the scrapheap.

Han Min-hong, now 79, successfully tested his self-driving car on the roads of Seoul in 1993 – a decade before Elon Musk even founded Tesla.