Hyundai to launch smart car-to-home system within 2 years

Many smart home owners may own a car, and when both home appliances and cars get smarter, users might want to bridge these two and their commands. To this end, South Korean car manufacturer Hyundai Motor has announced a plan to build a new in-car system which allows drivers to control home appliances from their automobiles via voice commands.

The new system will be divided into two parts. The home-to-car connectivity, which will be introduced in 2018, will allow drivers to start their cars and open or close the doors by talking to the car. The car-to-home connectivity, to be rolled out the following year, will let drivers control home lighting, temperature and audio systems before they pull in the driveway, directly in the cars.

The systems will be installed in the Hyundai brand in South Korea first, before being rolled out to other markets. They will work with popular voice assistants including Amazon Alexa and Google Home.

Hyundai Blue Link, the company’s current connected car system, already supports Amazon Echo and Google Assistant, and can be controlled from a smartphone or a smart watch.

With the Google Assistant feature, Hyundai owners with a Google Home at home may control their vehicles with voice commands, to start the engine or lock the door remotely, for example.

Users may also ask Google Home to start the car and set the temperature at the same time, to send alerts for speed, valet and alarms, to remotely start or stop charging (for electric cars), to send navigation instructions and to ask for vehicle health reports.

For example, users may say “Ok Google, what is the weather like today?” and ask the assistant to set the in-car temperature accordingly.

In the announcement, Hyundai also says it will make the Blue Link service a complementary, standard feature for three years, on all of its 2017 IONIQ models and all of its 2018 vehicles.