Use voice recognition to start your car with Hyundai’s Blue Link smartwatch app

By Stephen Edelstein Published January 5, 2015

Automakers are desperately trying to better-integrate smartphones into car dashboards, but what about smartwatches?

Hyundai will unveil a smartwatch app for its Blue Link telematics system at CES this week that will include voice controls for certain car functions.

Recommended Videos

Once the app is downloaded and paired with the car via Bluetooth, the user just needs to tap an icon to activate the voice-recognition features.

Those features include remote engine start, locking and unlocking the doors, honking the horn and flashing the lights, and a car-finder function for crowded parking lots.

Hyundai owners can also call roadside assistance or a Blue Link operator using the app.

The Korean carmaker partnered with Station Digital Media to develop the app, which works with both first- and second-generation versions of Blue Link.

The first generation rolled out with the 2012 Sonata and is currently available on most Hyundai models. The second-generation system launched last year and is currently offered on the 2015 Genesis, Sonata, and Azera.

The app itself will be available on Google Play for free beginning sometime in “the first quarter of 2015,” Hyundai says.

Stephen Edelstein

Former Contributing Editor

Stephen is a freelance automotive journalist covering all things cars. He likes anything with four wheels, from classic cars…

Topics

Hyundai

Cars

A new sodium battery posts wild four-minute charging numbers, but don’t expect it in an EV yet

The breakthrough could improve fast charging and battery life, but the study hasn’t demonstrated those results in a production-sized pack

EV Charger

A new sodium-metal battery has posted a charging number that makes today’s EVs look painfully slow. In laboratory testing, the cell operated at a 15C rate, equivalent to completing a charge or discharge in roughly four minutes.

That doesn’t mean researchers plugged in an electric car and watched it fill up before the driver finished buying coffee. The result came from a small experimental cell using a new quasi-solid electrolyte, while the larger pouch-cell prototype delivered far less dramatic performance.

Cars

The Apple Car may be dead, but it became the foundation of Apple Intelligence

A decade of work on a canceled car project reportedly laid the groundwork for Apple Intelligence.

Apple Intelligence in Apple Car

The Apple Car may have never left the garage, but it apparently gave birth to Apple's AI ambitions. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple's canceled autonomous vehicle project, one that consumed more than a decade of work and over $10 billion before being scrapped in 2024, ended up laying the technological foundation for Apple Intelligence. In a rather ironic twist, one of Apple's most expensive failures may also become one of its most important long-term investments.

The Apple Car forced Apple to think like an AI company

Cars

Volkswagen’s ID. Unyx 09 just leaked, and it’s the kind of EV I want to see in the US

VW's partnership with Xpeng is producing exactly what we hoped.

Bumper, Transportation, Vehicle

I've been watching Volkswagen's China lineup quietly get cooler for the past two years, but the ID. Unyx 09 might be the moment it finally gets exciting, not just for Chinese buyers, but for the rest of the world as well.

Regulatory filings from China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Batch 409, have exposed the full specs of the upcoming sedan ahead of its official launch later this year, and it looks nothing like any VW car I've seen before (via CarNewsChina).