Hyundai lets car start with smartwatch and voice control

Car manufacturer Hyundai will present a smartwatch application at the American Consumer Electronics Show next week that makes it possible, among other things, to start a car remotely. The app also supports voice control.

The program works with Hyundai Blue Link, an integrated navigation system that can connect to smartphones to retrieve current traffic information. An Android version for smartphones already exists for that system, and Hyundai is now adding a variant for smartwatches with Android Wear, the South Korean manufacturer announced on Friday.

With the app, a Hyundai owner can remotely control his car after pairing the watch with his phone via Bluetooth. The owner can start his car, open and close doors, switch the lights on and off and sound the horn. For this, he can use the interface of the smartwatch app or voice control; the commands ‘start my car’, ‘lock my car’ and ‘find my car’ are among the possibilities, according to Hyundai.

Hyundai will demonstrate the technology at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week. According to the car manufacturer, the smartwatch app works in combination with first and next generation Hyundai cars with Blue Link. This concerns models such as the Sonata, Genesis and Azera.

“Connecting to a car through a smartwatch and voice control was something that was previously only seen in science fiction movies. Now we can offer that possibility to the owners of Hyundai cars with Blue Link,” said Hyundai. Incidentally, the functionality only seems to be available for Android. The manufacturer has not yet released anything about support for other platforms.