Samsung will soon enable you to manage smart home devices directly from your car's dashboard.

      Samsung's Car-to-Home feature allows drivers of Hyundai and Kia vehicles to manage smart appliances directly through their car's infotainment display.

      Your vehicle could potentially transform into the central smart home controller for your residence. Samsung has enhanced SmartThings integration, which allows drivers to operate their smart home devices straight from their car’s infotainment system, a feature dubbed Car-to-Home.

      This feature builds upon the previously established Home-to-Car capability, which enabled users to monitor their vehicles from within their homes. Car-to-Home reverses this functionality, allowing you to control smart appliances—like air conditioners, lighting systems, and various smart switches—from your car's dashboard.

      What are the capabilities of the Car-to-Home feature?

      The feature's practical applications are extensive, as it is compatible with devices like air conditioners, air purifiers, robot vacuums, lights, and cameras. The connection process is simple: drivers can scan a QR code shown on their car’s infotainment screen to link their vehicle to their SmartThings account.

      In addition to manual operations (switching devices on and off), the Car-to-Home feature enables location-based automation that significantly enhances your home’s responsiveness to your daily activities. Users can create routines that automatically activate necessary appliances as they park their vehicle in the garage.

      It’s easy to envision users taking advantage of this feature to cool their rooms or operate air purifiers before arriving home from a long day at work. Conversely, the feature is capable of shutting everything off automatically as you enter the car and leave your driveway. There’s also an Away Mode to manage lights when you are not at home.

      Who is eligible to access this feature, and when?

      Currently, the feature is supported in select Hyundai and Kia models equipped with the connected car Navigation Cockpit (ccNC) introduced in Korea after November 2022. However, both Samsung and Hyundai plan to broaden the availability of this feature to their customers worldwide in the future.

      Eligible models include Grandeur, Santa Fe, Ioniq 5, K5, Sorento, and EV9. Samsung also intends to extend this capability to Genesis vehicles outfitted with the ccIC27 infotainment system.

      As this feature becomes more widely available, it could lead to a transformation where vehicles serve as crucial components of an individual's smart home ecosystem, integrating mobility with domestic technology in ways that were previously just a concept.

      For over five years, Shikhar has effectively simplified advancements in consumer technology and reported on them.

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