Hyundai Motor Group (HMG) said it now has 10m global subscribers of its connected car services, up from just 1m in 2018, which it claimed provided strong support for its future software defined vehicle (SDV) strategy. 

The group’s connected car services, Hyundai Bluelink, Kia Connect and Genesis Connected Services, use wireless networks to provide infotainment systems and smartphone applications and have become an important source of revenue.

The company said these platforms have evolved beyond offering basic services such as real time navigation, voice recognition and remote vehicle control, to also include innovative services such as over the air (OTA) updates, payments and audio/video streaming.

Hae-Young Kwon, vice president of the infotainment development centre at HMG, said in a statement: “Our goal is to accelerate the transition to the SDV era by focusing on software technologies that seamlessly connect all journeys. We will expand the ecosystem to provide more personalised mobility services.”

If this growth trend continues, the group expects its global connected subscriber base to reach 20m by the end of 2026. It also plans to expand these services to include south-east Asia markets in the near future once it finalises deals with local network providers.

HMG said, based on a domain-centralised architecture, it was integrating vehicle controllers into four key domains including electronics and convenience; driving performance; infotainment; and advanced driver assistance systems. It was expected to eventually evolve them into a centralised architecture for unified control.  The group added it was also “developing software and related devices from a holistic user experience perspective, where mobility devices connect with various services to create a new mobility ecosystem and where rich mobility data and AI technologies understand user intent so that all experiences are naturally connected”.