Hyundai Motor Group has announced it has surpassed 10 million global connected car service subscribers.
The milestone comes just one year and 10 months after reaching 5 million subscribers in August 2021, something which the company says supports the acceleration of the Group’s Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV) strategy.
Hyundai says the services used “have evolved beyond the basics, such as real-time navigation, voice recognition and remote vehicle control”, to include innovative services, such as over-the-air updates, in-car payments and audio/video streaming. Hyundai Motor, Kia and Genesis currently operate Bluelink, Kia Connect and Genesis Connected services.
“Our goal is to accelerate the transition to the SDV era by focusing on software technologies that seamlessly connect all journeys,” said Hae-Young Kwon, Vice President of the Infotainment Development Center at Hyundai Motor Group. “We will expand the ecosystem to provide more personalized mobility services for our customers.”
The Group introduced the first connected car services in Korea in 2003 and have since expanded the services to the global market. In overseas markets, the services were first launched in the US in June 2011, and have expanded to China, Europe, India and most recently Singapore, providing services to customers in more than 50 countries.
The global subscribers reached a million in May 2018, followed by five million in August 2021, eight million in October 2022 and ten million this month. As the global market for the services expand, the number of overseas subscribers is growing faster than in Korea.
With this growth trend, the Group expects to reach 20 million subscribers worldwide, including Korea, by the end of 2026.
In the future, the Group plans to consider expanding their connected car services to markets in Southeast Asia by strengthening partnerships with major global service providers to further develop innovative services that meet those customers’ diverse needs.
In addition, the connected car services are expected to be further enhanced in line with the Group’s transition to SDV systems. The Group unveiled its SDV vision and strategy at the ‘Unlock the Software Age’ event in October 2022, and announced that it will start making OTA software updates available on all future vehicle models.
The Group says that, based on a domain-centralised architecture, it is integrating vehicle controllers in four domains, including electronics and convenience, driving performance, infotainment and advanced driver assistance system. It is expected to eventually evolve into a centralised architecture for unified control. It is also developing software and related devices from a holistic user experience perspective, where mobility devices connect with various services to create a new mobility ecosystem, and where rich mobility data and AI technologies understand user intent so that all experiences are naturally connected.
(Graphic – Hyundai)
