Electric Vehicles Carrying Drones Used for Forest Restoration in Wildfire-Affected Areas

Hyundai Motor Company, Korea National Arboretum, and social enterprise Tree Planet signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on the 10th for a sustainable forest ecosystem restoration project.

Through this agreement, the three organizations and companies will promote forest restoration centered on the East Coast region, which suffered the largest wildfire damage in Korea, and create new eco-friendly forests over the next five years. The Korea National Arboretum is an agency under the Korea Forest Service aiming to restore forest ecosystem health, and Tree Planet is a social venture company specializing in tree planting.

Ioniq Drone Station
Photo by Hyundai Motor Group

The newly created forest is part of Hyundai Motor’s eco-friendly shared value creation (CSV) activity, the Ioniq Forest Project, which has been ongoing since 2016. When restoring and monitoring the forest, the Ioniq Drone Station will be utilized. This vehicle is a special-purpose forestry management vehicle based on Hyundai’s electric vehicle Ioniq 5, equipped with a drone station in the trunk space and a drone battery charging deck using V2L technology that supplies external power in the front frunk of the vehicle.

Hyundai Motor expects that various research collaborations will be possible by using drones to periodically observe planting and forest growth processes and collect data in wildfire-damaged areas that are difficult to access. A company representative said, "From the perspective of responding to climate change, we wanted to promote forest restoration centered on the largest wildfire damage area in Korea," adding, "We will continue sincere efforts for the environment together with various partners."

The Ioniq Forest, an eco-friendly social contribution program operated by Hyundai Motor for nine years, started by creating a fine dust prevention forest at the Incheon Metropolitan Landfill Site and has been establishing forests with themes responding to social issues of the times. It is also active overseas, having planted 500,000 trees by last year and aiming to plant 1 million trees by next year.

Ioniq Drone Station
Photo by Hyundai Motor Group