Hyundai, Kia, and Samsung announced on Thursday a partnership to enhance connectivity between vehicles and home devices, with potential benefits for electric vehicle owners.
The goal is to enable Hyundai and Kia owners to remotely control appliances through the infotainment systems of their vehicles. They can also use smart speakers, smart TVs, or smartphone apps to control certain vehicle functions from their homes, according to Hyundai.
This will be made possible by integrating the connected car services of Hyundai and Kia with Samsung’s “SmartThings” digital platform, as stated in the press release. Hyundai and Kia will develop “stable infotainment systems that provide services” for this purpose, adding features through over-the-air (OTA) updates. However, Hyundai also mentioned that some of these features might be available for existing vehicles through OTA updates or by adding new software via USB.
A feature specifically planned for electric vehicle owners is energy management, allowing them to “monitor the energy usage of their home and vehicle and adjust optimal charging times,” according to Hyundai. This would provide a level of integration that Hyundai currently lacks. Currently, Hyundai has Hyundai Home, which serves as an aggregation tool helping electric vehicle buyers set up charging, solar power, and energy storage.
Hyundai has mentioned that its Electric-Global Modular Platform (E-GMP) for electric vehicles supports bidirectional charging, but the company’s electric vehicles so far did not have this feature enabled. The Kia EV9 is the first E-GMP model offering bidirectional charging in a form usable by Americans, including Vehicle-to-Home (V2H) and Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) capabilities, with Wallbox.
In addition to leveraging the potential of E-GMP, this could finally fulfill Hyundai’s promise that the Ioniq brand for electric vehicles will extend beyond vehicles. However, without a firm timeline from Hyundai, Kia, and Samsung on when this enhanced connectivity will be available, it is unclear when this will happen.
