South Korea’s oil refiner and marketer GS Caltex announced that it is investing KRW35 billion (USD31 million) in Green Car, the car-sharing subsidiary of Lotte Rental, to acquire a 10% stake.

Green Car is South Korea’s pioneer car-sharing service and has rapidly grown to 6,500 vehicles and three million members.

GS Caltex expects to take advantage of new business opportunities in the car-sharing market through this strategic investment.

GS Caltex is exploring business opportunities that can become new growth engines as well as mobility-related fields such as electric cars, autonomous vehicles, etc.

GS Caltex and Green Car will establish a strategic partnership to lead future mobility projects that use vehicles as services in accordance with consumer trends that are changing from car ownership to car sharing.

The two companies plan to increase synergies by combining gas stations, parking infrastructures owned by GS Caltex and its affiliates, car sharing operation know-how accumulated over the past seven years, and car data. In addition, the two companies will jointly develop a mobility base, a key element of the future autonomous future.

GS Caltex also has made strategic investments in an online-to-offline auto repair service provider, Cardoc Inc., and connected car solution provider using Bluetooth technology, OWiN Corp.

“We will continue our strategic alliance with Lotte Rental as a partner of future mobility business,” GS Caltex said in a statement.

“Since the future mobility market will be a place of collaboration where different technologies such as autonomous navigation and artificial intelligence (AI) will converge, it is very important to organically cooperate with each other. We will work together. “