South Korean carmaker Hyundai will soon roll out the ‘BlueLink’ connectivity feature in India that will allow users to interact with their cars using voice, while enabling them to remotely switch on/off the car or its AC.
This feature will be first introduced in its upcoming compact SUV Venue.
“BlueLink is Hyundai’s global technology which will be introduced in the Indian market with 33 features, of which 10 would be India-specific features such as a panic button, for most practical and holistic connectivity. This will herald a new era of smart connected cars in India,” Ji Hong Baek, managing director, Hyundai Motor India Engineering, told The Hindu.
The feature is powered by an “inbuilt and tamper-proof device” with a Vodafone-Idea eSim and a cloud-based voice recognition platform. “The ‘interactive voice recognition’ has been developed specifically for customers from different regions in India. It currently supports ‘Indian English’ language,” Mr. Baek said.
Hyundai is also planning to introduce these connectivity features in future models in the country.
Challenges
Asked about challenges faced, Mr. Baek said: “We faced some strong challenges because of network conditions. Connected cars work on networks. We have experience in connected cars of over 10 years, mainly in developed markets. So it was a little difficult. But now we have made our systems better.”
He added the company started working on bringing the technology to India about two years back, pointing out that high number of regional languages in India and different accents also difficult.
He, however, stressed that all features have been tested several times to fine-tune them.
For example, in case BlueLink is unable to find a 4G network, it will automatically look for 3G or 2G networks, whichever is available.
Mr. Baek added that the data of Indian users would be stored in India. While the company would at present use public cloud services providers it might also look at setting up their own server in India.
Stating that the feature was available only in developed markets till now, the “good exposure” in India would help the company to take BlueLink to other developing markets such as Indonesia and Brazil.