Your car could become the new smart home hub for your home. Samsung has expanded SmartThings integration so drivers can control their smart home devices directly from their car’s infotainment system. It’s called car-to-home.
Building on the previous Home-to-Car feature, which allowed users to monitor their cars from inside the home, Car-to-Home switches the feature so you can control your smart home devices like air conditioners, lighting systems, and other smart switches from your car’s dashboard.
What can the car-to-home function do?
The practical scope of the feature is wider than it might initially sound, as it is compatible with devices such as air conditioners, air purifiers, robot vacuum cleaners, lights and cameras. The connection is straightforward: drivers scan a QR code displayed on their car’s infotainment screen and link their vehicle to their SmartThings account.
Aside from manual control (flipping the switches), Car-to-Home functionality allows for location-based automation that truly changes the way your home responds to your day. You can set routines to have the SmartThings network turn on the necessary devices while you park your car in the garage.
I can see people using this feature to pre-cool their rooms or run air purifiers before they get home after a hard day at the office. On the contrary, the function should also turn everything off (automatically) when you get in the car and leave the driveway. There is a special away mode for controlling the lighting when you are away.
Who gets access and when?
Currently, the feature is available for select Hyundai and Kia vehicles, especially those that have the Connected Car Navigation Cockpit (ccNC) launched in Korea after November 2022. However, both Samsung and Hyundai intend to make the feature available to their customers worldwide in due course.
Eligible models include Grandeur, Santa Fe, Ioniq 5, K5, Sorento and EV9. Samsung also plans to expand the feature to Genesis vehicles equipped with the ccIC27 infotainment system.
Once the feature becomes available to a wider audience, it could lead to a behavioral shift in which cars become central hubs in a person’s smart home ecosystem, bridging mobility and home technology in ways that until recently were purely speculative.
