Hyundai Motor Group’s connected car services reach 10 million subscribers

[Photo provided by Hyundai Motor Group]

Hyundai Motor Group’s global connected car service (CCS) subscribers have surpassed 10 million since its initial launch in 2003. While it took the group 18 years to reach 5 million CCS subscribers, the growth rate has been rapid, surpassing 10 million in just 1 year and 10 months.

Hyundai Motor Group announced on Monday that the number of CCS subscribers across its car brands, including Hyundai Motor Co.’s Bluelink, Kia Corp.’s Connect, and Genesis Connected Services, has exceeded 10 million this month based on currently active service subscribers. Although it is a year behind the company’s goal of “10 million by early 2022” announced at the 2019 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), it is still considered a very rapid growth.

CCS utilizes wireless networks to enable in-vehicle infotainment systems and smartphone applications that provide customers with convenient access to their vehicles. Initially, it mainly offered real-time navigation, voice recognition and remote vehicle control. However, recently, it has expanded to include innovative services, such as remote vehicle diagnostics, over-the-air (OTA) software updates, in-car payments, and video and audio streaming.

As the number of CCS-subscribed vehicles on the road increases, the amount of data they generate, such as traffic signals, vehicle sensor information, and driving information, also increases significantly. Automakers apply artificial intelligence (AI) deep learning technology to this big data and use it as a basis for providing more advanced services. A typical example is car sharing and car hailing.

Hyundai Motor Group first entered the CCS market in 2003 by launching Mogen. Then in 2012, Hyundai Motor‘s Bluelink and Kia’s UVO, now Connect, began separate operations. Genesis Connected Services was introduced in 2017.

Initially operating CCS primarily in Korea, Hyundai Motor Group launched its service in the U.S. in June 2011, and have expanded it to China, Europe, India, Singapore and more. Currently, Hyundai Motor Group’s CCS is available in over 50 countries. This multinational strategy has coincided with strong overseas sales of Hyundai Motor Group vehicles, and in October of last year, the number of overseas CCS subscribers surpassed that of domestic ones for the first time.

In terms of pricing, Hyundai Motor‘s Bluelink initially offered a two-year free service period but later extended it to five years in 2018 to actively increase subscribers. By the end of 2020, the company even introduced a plan that extended the free service period to 10 years with some feature limitations. Kia’s Connect and Genesis Connected Services also offer five years of free service for new vehicle purchases, followed by a monthly fee of around 10,000 won ($7.67).

“If the current trend continues, we expect to have 20 million subscribers worldwide, including South Korea, by 2026,” said a Hyundai Motor Group official.

Hyundai Motor Group plans to expand the service to regions without CCS, including Southeast Asia. “We plan to introduce connected car services that satisfy customers by combining and processing various data, focusing on software technologies that connect all travel journeys,” said Hae-young Kwon, Vice President of the Infotainment Development Center at Hyundai Motor Group.

Hyundai Motor Group plans to continuously enhance its advanced connected car Operating System (ccOS) optimized for integrated controllers. The ccOS, developed in-house by Hyundai Motor Group, is a software platform that can be applied universally to all controllers.

In particular, high-performance semiconductors are required to collect and process the massive amount of information generated by connected cars. For this purpose, Hyundai Motor Group has collaborated with global AI computing company Nvidia Corp. and integrated the high-performance information processing semiconductor Nvidia Drive hardware into ccOS.