Hyundai Motor to Restore Forest Ecosystems with IONIQ Drone Station

MOU Signed with Korea Forest Service and Triple Planet to Support Forest Damage Recovery
Restoring Wildfire-Affected Areas for Three Years Using "IONIQ 5" and "IONIQ 9 Drone Stations"

Hyundai Motor Company is set to embark on the restoration of forest-damaged areas using electric vehicle-based integrated drone solutions.

Hyundai Motor Company's Hyun Cheol Jeon, Head of Business Development and Sustainability Management, Eun Sik Park, Administrator of the Korea Forest Service, and Hyungsoo Kim, CEO of Triple Planet. Hyundai Motor Company

On May 27, Hyundai Motor Company announced that it had signed a “Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for Supporting Forest Damage Recovery” with the Korea Forest Service and Triple Planet—a social venture specializing in tree planting—at the National Institute of Forest Science in Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul, the previous day.

Through this agreement, Hyundai Motor Company, together with the Korea Forest Service and Triple Planet, plans to carry out phased forest restoration over the next three years, starting this year, focusing on reforestation in wildfire-affected areas of Gyeongsangnam-do.

Specifically, the company will utilize the “IONIQ Drone Station,” an eco-friendly electric vehicle-based integrated drone solution, to carry out seed ball (eco-friendly seeds molded with loess into a spherical form) planting and forest monitoring, among other activities.

The IONIQ Drone Station is a special-purpose vehicle for forestry, developed based on Hyundai’s IONIQ 5 and IONIQ 9 models. Equipped with an in-house drone control system, it enables planting in hard-to-reach forest areas, and with its V2L (Vehicle to Load) feature, drones can be operated without external power sources.

Hyundai Motor Company first introduced the “IONIQ 5 Monitoring Drone Station” in 2023. Last year, the company added the “IONIQ 9 Seed Ball Drone Station,” expanding its smart forest ecosystem restoration initiatives.

The current forest restoration activities involve utilizing the “IONIQ 9 Seed Ball Drone Station” to drop approximately 600 kilograms (50 million units) of seed balls in wildfire-affected areas such as Andong, Sancheong, and Uljin in Gyeongsangnam-do. In addition, the “IONIQ 5 Monitoring Drone Station” will be used for: ▲ planting and monitoring growth in wildfire-affected regions ▲ digitizing tree growth data ▲ measuring carbon absorption, and more.

Alongside restoration of wildfire-affected areas, Hyundai Motor Company will also collaborate with the Korea Forest Service and Triple Planet on: ▲ ICT-based forest management ▲ smart ecological forest restoration ▲ creation of honey-source forests and regional coexistence ▲ global dissemination of K-Forest technology ▲ research and development in forestry.

The ecological restoration project promoted through the IONIQ Drone Station is part of Hyundai Motor Company’s “IONIQ Forest” initiative, an eco-friendly social contribution project it has been operating since 2016.

IONIQ Forest began as a project to create forests that prevent fine dust at landfill sites in the Seoul metropolitan area and has continued to expand reforestation efforts. Through global IONIQ Forest projects, Hyundai has planted approximately 2 million trees in countries such as Brazil, India, Vietnam, the United States, Mexico, and Canada, as well as in Korea, and plans to further expand eco-friendly forest creation in the future.

A Hyundai Motor Company representative stated, “We will strive to establish a sustainable forest ecosystem by integrating advanced drone technology and eco-friendly vehicles as a new forest restoration solution, in line with the task of preventing large-scale wildfire damage.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.