President Chang-Hyeon Tune, head of the brand new Transportation-as-a-Service Division at Hyundai Motor Group, discusses the significance of software program outlined mobility in shaping a future past autos.
It is vitally simple to get swept up within the unashamed future-gazing that goes on on the Shopper Electronics Present in Las Vegas. The tech and software program symposium that takes place yearly underneath the shimmering lights of Sin Metropolis is an excuse for manufacturers to showcase a imaginative and prescient of what lies forward when all the pieces from AI to robotics, software program to {hardware} turn into ever-more entwined in our each day lives.
OEMs have historically used the occasion as a stage to showcase future infotainment programs, breakthroughs in autonomous driving know-how and early appears to be like at different powertrains, and far of it has been as pie-in-the-sky because the wearable oven that drew crowds this 12 months (see present report on web page XX).
However for Chang-Hyeon Tune, a not too long ago appointed President and Head of Hyundai Motor Group’s new Transportation-as-a-Service (TaaS) Division, CES appears like residence. A former worker of Apple and Microsoft, he’s additionally the founding father of Naver Labs, an organization Tune himself refers to as ‘the Google of Korea’. Software program is his language, and his focus is to understand Hyundai’s Software program-defined Every thing (SDx) technique that can rework the enterprise from a maker of automobiles and business autos into a sensible mobility options supplier.
“Our imaginative and prescient goes past autos,” Tune explains. “It’s about empowering a mobility ecosystem. We see motion as a brand new supply of data and innovation. And our options and units make that data universally helpful.”
Previous to taking his position on the Hyundai Motor Group, Tune additionally based autonomous transportation-as-a-service start-up 42dot again in 2019, an organization that Hyundai Motor Group (HMG) acquired three years later for 427.6 billion gained (round £255 million or $330 million).
His work at 42dot, in addition to his expertise at tech giants like Apple and Microsoft, guarantee Tune is completely positioned to spearhead a venture that can in the end lead to your entire mobility ecosystem that Hyundai Motor Group envisions. This might embrace autonomous electrical automobiles, ride-hailing companies and electrified business autos, harnessing the facility of software program and AI to make it protected and handy for the top consumer to seamlessly transfer across the city atmosphere.
Small steps
Though the overarching image will in the future be a seamless interconnected net of Hyundai-branded mobility options, Tune admits that there’s a lengthy technique to go earlier than it turns into a actuality.
“The corporate is transferring in direction of a software-defined automobile future, to allow quicker updates and steady enchancment to our merchandise,” he says. “So, the main focus for me over the subsequent two years is to introduce a brand new infotainment platform, which we’re calling SDV OS, which is able to embrace an built-in AI assistant and supply an app market to prospects.
“I’m a giant Apple fan and have at all times cherished CarPlay. I’m additionally a giant believer {that a} good infotainment system and in-car consumer expertise ought to be as simple as utilizing and updating your smartphone. That’s what we should always try for.”
This technique will present itself in an overhaul of Hyundai and Kia infotainment programs over the approaching years, providing prospects the flexibility to obtain apps and buy companies from an internet market, comparable to Consumer Primarily based Insurance coverage, which harnesses information from the automobile to ship a extra bespoke – and doubtlessly cheaper – insurance coverage product to the top consumer.
“To do that, we’re at the moment opening our API to 3rd celebration builders and saying, ‘Right here is our information, try to enhance on what we now have and benefit from what we now have constructed’ so we will develop a killer app that makes use of the automobile information to supply extra to the consumer,” he says. “I feel that’s what distinguishes us from many different OEMs, the actual fact we’re being open.”
Though not utterly distinctive – President Tune is fast to say Mercedes-Benz and the work the German automotive large is enterprise by itself MB.OS platform – HMG’s upcoming working system will present the basics for the continuously related, simply up to date subsequent technology of SDV.
Studying the language
Though Synthetic Intelligence will play a a lot larger position in Hyundai Motor Group’s good mobility masterplan, the primary forays into the tech have already been made, as Chang-Hyeon Tune brings his learnings from Naver Labs to the automotive world.
“The problem with present Giant Studying Fashions (LLM) is that they don’t have entry to automobile information,” Tune stated after revealing that his staff had been already in superior phases of making its personal Synthetic Intelligence-based LLM to be used in upcoming Hyundai Motor Group autos. “These fashions don’t have entry to telephone contacts, they don’t have entry to automobile settings and driver information, that means present fashions can’t give customers all the solutions.”
Naver Labs already has its personal LLM and contemplating it acts as a search engine, mapping and productiveness options supplier in South Korea, it already has deep expertise in harnessing AI to make issues simpler for the top consumer.
Tune stated he wished to create a ‘hybrid’ voice assistant system that might ship generic questions out to issues like ChatGPT, Naver and different such digital companies for solutions, however would additionally use the likes of Mapbox’s MapGPT’s location-intelligent AI voice assistant relating to conversational navigational requests and its personal voice assistant for automobile performance.
Once more, referring to his admiration for CarPlay, Tune needs this LLM to work seamlessly throughout all programs, enabling drivers to make use of voice instructions to manage in-vehicle performance, together with local weather management, home windows and music, in addition to combine well-liked exterior apps, comparable to OpenTable and TripAdvisor into its upcoming navigation system – all of which might be interacted with utilizing conversational, pure language.
This sentiment was beforehand echoed by Charles Ryu, Senior Vice President and Head of the International Model & CX Division at sister firm Kia, who revealed throughout its inaugural EV Day final 12 months that upcoming Kia EV fashions would function a complicated AI chatbot that might permit prospects to do all the pieces from ebook in scheduled servicing and upkeep, to securing tables at eating places.
Tune understands that AI is scorching property proper now, referring to the actual fact Volkswagen selected CES to announce its partnership with ChatGPT, introducing it to autos later this 12 months, whereas Mercedes-Benz additionally revealed particulars of its personal AI-powered voice assistant.
However greater than only a gimmick that permits prospects to ‘speak’ to their automobiles, Tune feels that growing an in-house LLM shall be an essential basis for future types of superior mobility, whether or not that’s reserving a driverless robo-taxi or adjusting the atmosphere inside your DICE (Digital Curated Expertise) autonomous mobility pod (see Rolling the DICE).
Every thing is related
Though a brand new infotainment system and an AI-infused voice assistant may sound like easy first steps, the Hyundai Motor Group feels that it’s the foundation from which to launch its software-defined future.
The automaker feels that as SDVs turn into extra commonplace and standardised, it can make administration of large-scale fleets a lot simpler and extra environment friendly. Considering past the personal proprietor, HMG needs to provide B2B prospects entry to real-time information analytics and user-friendly administrative interfaces, permitting them to function autos extra effectively and tackle real-time points, with out the necessity for separate telematics units.
At this 12 months’s CES, Hyundai Motor Group laid out its imaginative and prescient of the longer term the place autos, fleets and mobility basically finally turn into managed and outlined by Synthetic Intelligence. Outlined as ‘transportation-as-a-service,’ Hyundai believes it can permit customers to freely entry transportation and mobility companies when required.
Every thing from units to metropolis infrastructure shall be interconnected inside an ecosystem, enabling on-demand entry to transportation, whereas the usage of AI will enhance the intelligence of the service over time. Hyundai says there shall be a time when it will likely be capable of predict when a buyer requires a experience from one aspect of the town to a different, negating the necessity for third celebration apps.
Tune believes his expertise with growing autonomous autos via his firm 42dot has primed him for this daring new imaginative and prescient, whereas a partnership with Samsung, which is able to present its newest premium automotive processor, dubbed Exynos Auto, will ship the {hardware} to understand this new software-driven method.
Though it’s simple to really feel that autonomous passenger pods and Hyundai’s perception that out of date ‘mobility modules’ might turn into an workplace house or perhaps a pop–up store are fanciful sci-fi daydreams, it’s clear The Group has a street map that stretches far past the passenger automobile and mobility options we all know and recognise in the present day.
Additional proof of this might be discovered within the car parking zone of the Las Vegas Conference Middle, the place Hyundai’s electrical vertical take-off and touchdown (eVTOL) sub-brand, Supernal, showcased its S-A2 – an electrified, eight-rotor flying craft that can go into its testing part subsequent 12 months. We might quickly discover that Supernal turns into the ‘Uber of the skies’, with software program, AI and all the pieces that Tune has talked about to this point taking part in an essential position in its seamless operation.
The expertise to make it work
“I spend a minimum of a 3rd of my time making an attempt to rent the fitting individuals,” Tune explains when quizzed in regards to the greatest points going through Hyundai Motor Group’s push in direction of a software-defined future. “There’s a lot competitors on the market for gifted individuals in tech, and that’s the type of particular person I need to appeal to. We nonetheless rent lots of people from the automotive trade, however their mindset usually isn’t proper for what we try to attain. However then if I rent from tech firms, these individuals don’t actually perceive automotive. So, I’ve to provide them a variety of course.”
Though the previous adage of ‘transfer quick and break issues’ doesn’t fairly apply to the method Tune is taking throughout the Hyundai Motor Group, he admits that there must be a giant shift in the way in which the corporate has to suppose and act whether it is to maintain up with the tempo of change.
“We method issues with a tech mindset and Hyundai could be very conventional, so the corporate has very completely different processes,” he says. “I’ve to be aware of this, as a result of as soon as 42dot turned a part of The Group, any errors we made additionally turned the errors of The Group. It has made us turn into safer; it has actually helped us.”
Though Tune says altering the way in which Hyundai Motor Group approaches software program was gradual at first, he says issues at the moment are altering “very quick”, with the enterprise basically accepting that it has to suppose like a tech firm if it needs to efficiently transfer into this house.
“That’s a part of the explanation I got here to CES0,” he concludes, “As a result of I wished to put out the challenges we face and the issues we have to resolve and ship a message for the fitting individuals to hitch us.”
Rolling the DICE
Hyundai’s Digital Curated Expertise, which was on show on its substantial stand at this 12 months’s CES, offers an perception into what we might anticipate from Group’s future mobility options.
Dubbed a ‘private mobility platform’, the extremely autonomous pod is extra like a small lounge on wheels than it’s a automobile or EV that we would anticipate to be donning a Hyundai badge. It supplies “curated companies via software program know-how”, in keeping with Hyundai, whereas shows on all partitions supply an immersive consumer expertise when travelling.
The consumer interacts with a ‘kinetic interface’, which is akin to an AI-powered digital face that communicates with the consumer through pure language, whereas a bio-sensing digital camera can pick-up on how the passenger is feeling and regulate the atmosphere accordingly.
Bigger variations of DICE, dubbed SPACE (Spatial Curated Expertise), might be tailor-made much more to the consumer’s tastes and necessities, whereas out of date mobility modules can then be remodeled into moveable items of structure, be it workplace house or pop-up retailers.
