Popular Mechanics (South Africa)
Integrating lifestyle and mobility At your service
Blurring the lines between mobility, where we live, and where we work
Cars that integrate with our living spaces when docked and that, on the move, become mobile living spaces, are part of an ambitious boundary-crossing philosophy from Hyundai. And Korea’s biggest car maker is pushing ahead with plans to integrate with the Internet of Things: by next year, in the initial stages of its Connected Car vision we’ll be able to start cars by remote voice command.
Interconnected services that will blur lines between mobility and living and work spaces, the company said in revealing elements of its future mobility strategy at the 2017 Seoul Motor Show. Its next generation of convergent technology under development includes a new Connected Car Service Platform (ccsp) and smart, hyper-connectivity innovations that focus on linking cars to customers’ lives, blurring the line between mobility and customers’ living and working spaces.
Developed in-house, ccsp will allow customers to connect seamlessly to a variety of other IOT services offered by telecommunications providers and global appliance services. “Home to Car” voicecontrolled operations will allow drivers to start their cars and open or close doors through speech. Meanwhile, “Car to Home” options will connect customers with smart home services, including home lighting, climate control and audio systems.
The potential reach of advanced Future Mobility technologies was showcased in Hyundai’s Smart House exhibit, a vision of how the car could be integrated with the daily lives of users, converging mobility and customer’s living and working spaces.
It suggested how cars could integrate with our living spaces when docked, before becoming a mobile living space when customers need to move around. Hyundai’s vision sees customers living, without interruption, while on the move as the comfort, convenience and connectivity features of the car and the home are combined into “one space”.
“Controlling vehicles via voice assistant is something that could become commonplace in the not-to-distant future,” said Seung-ho Hwang, executive vice president of the company and head of its Auto Intelligence division. Acknowledging that compatibility with other systems is vital, he added that the company was working with various companies in Korea and around the world to ensure that all of its platforms are compatible and, he added, “that Hyundai customers will be able to
interact with the Internet of Things in ways that have not been possible before”.
“Home to Car” services are expected in 2018 and “Car to Home” the year after.
Four key objectives of Hyundai’s Connected Car roadmap were presented at the show: Proactive Caring. Regular monitoring of a car’s diagnostic information, paired with analysis of Big Data, can help to diagnose potential problems before they become an issue, enabling remote proactive maintenance of vehicles. Smart Convenience. Hyundai plans to offer customers regular updates to vehicle software and features, even when the car is being driven. Cost Efficiency. Hyundai aims to bring cost-saving efficiencies to customers by analysing their driving patterns and fuel economy history. Potential benefits include highly accurate “distance to empty” figure and recommended routes for best fuel economy (and battery life, for EVS and hybrids). Connected Efficiency. Smart application management will ensure connectivity-reliant actions at optimum times, such as automatically updating software while the car is charging. Further efficiencies will be gained through monitoring factors that may impact on the driver each day, providing guidance, information or warnings as appropriate. For example, a weather checking service can deliver information to the driver to advise on the optimal time to wash the car.