With smart watch sales "skyrocketing," Hyundai owners soon will be able to connect with their cars using the wearable devices and the Hyundai Blue Link smart watch app, the carmaker said Friday. Hyundai's cloud-based Blue Link platform allows features like remote start and service information to be quickly accessed through devices like smart watches and smartphones, it said. Hyundai partnered with Station Digital Media to develop the Blue Link smart watch app and will demonstrate it at CES, it said. "This new app expands Hyundai's exploration into how wearable technology and Blue Link fit into a customer's lifestyle," it said. "Connecting to your car through a smart watch and voice recognition was previously something seen only in science fiction movies." To use the app, the smart watch wearer taps an icon or uses voice commands to execute remote functions, it said. The app allows Hyundai owners to remote start, lock and unlock doors as well as find their car in a crowded parking lot, it said. The app must be paired via Bluetooth to a smartphone that has the Blue Link mobile app installed, it said. At CES, Hyundai will demo the app on Motorola, LG, Samsung and Sony smart watches, it said. Android Wear users will be able to download the free app from Google Play starting this quarter, it said.

Hyundai will use CES to showcase what it’s calling “the unthinkable” -- demonstrating a new Display Audio system with no CD player or embedded navigation system. Display Audio is a high-resolution seven-inch color touch-screen display that has been built specifically for Android Auto and the latest generation Blue Link system. Blue Link uses a Verizon 4G connection to bring “seamless connectivity directly into the car,” Hyundai said. Display Audio “combines the best of phone-based connectivity technologies” with Blue Link, which provides features that are “only possible with an embedded telematics system,” such as remote engine start and automatic collision notification, it said. Blue Link also features maintenance alerts and the new Hyundai Assurance Car Care in-vehicle app, it said. Hyundai will launch Display Audio on select 2016 models and will eventually bring it to all of its entry-level models, it said. The Display Audio system brings “the newest smartphone integrations” into Hyundai vehicles through an “easy-to-access” USB port, it said. “Once the connection is made, users can access their smartphone for phone calls and contacts, music, navigation, messaging, and optimized third-party apps. Display Audio will have navigation capability through smartphone integrations and will also offer entertainment apps for music, news, sports and podcasts.

Volvo will use CES to demonstrate safety technology connecting motorists and cyclists, the company said Friday. The technology, designed to cut down on crashes between cars and bicycles, comprises a connected car and a prototype helmet that will communicate proximity alerts to cyclists and drivers using a smartphone app that shares the cyclist's position with the vehicle, Volvo said. If a collision is imminent, the driver will be alerted through a head-up display alert, and the cyclist will be warned via a helmet-mounted warning light, the company said. The concept grew out of a partnership with Volvo, Ericsson and POC, a sports gear maker, Volvo said.

The automotive industry doesn’t need to “reinvent security credentialing” or create an “isolated” automotive network as it moves forward on a vehicle-to-vehicle security credential management system (SCMS), CTIA said in comments filed Monday in response to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration request for information. Many of the issues faced in that industry are similar to those raised by a “growing M2M [machine-to-machine] communications ecosystem that supports the Internet of Things,” CTIA said. “M2M communications systems are faced with the same challenges to establish secure lines of communications and authenticate devices. Creating a separate, isolated network dedicated to automotive vehicles and associated infrastructure would likely result in dis-economies of scale in connection with production costs, deployment, and interoperability.”

Ford launched Sync 3 in-vehicle entertainment and communications system Thursday, promising faster performance, more “conversational” voice recognition, an intuitive touch screen similar to that of a smartphone and a simplified graphical interface. The company said it drew from 22,000 customer comments and suggestions in creating the third-generation platform, along with information from focus groups, surveys and competitive analysis. The system is optimized for hands-free operation, but the new touch screen delivers an experience similar to using a smartphone or tablet with gestures including pinch-to-zoom and swipe, it said. The display offers a bright background and large buttons with “high-contrast fonts” for daytime use, and at night it switches automatically to a dark background to help reduce eye fatigue and minimize reflections, Ford said. To reduce on-screen complexity, the home screen offers a choice of zones, navigation, audio and phone, and the system prioritizes the control options customers use most, the company said. Phone contacts are searchable via a finger swipe, and users can look up points of interest or addresses with a search box. The new voice recognition system cuts down on the number of steps required to carry out a command, Ford said. A user can name a song, artist, album or genre to bring up a song from a connected smartphone, no longer having to identify a category, the company said, and to switch to SiriusXM or terrestrial radio, users say the name of the station or station number. New features in AppLink enable users to control compatible apps using voice commands or buttons on screen, and AppLink automatically discovers streaming music service apps such as iHeartRadio Auto, NPR One, Pandora, Spotify, SiriusXM and Stitcher, Ford said. In the case of a "significant' accident, a Bluetooth-connected phone is used to dial 911, alerting first-responders to the vehicle’s location. With Sync 3, additional information is relayed, including if airbags were deployed, where damage occurred to the vehicle and the number of safety belts detected in use to help emergency call takers dispatch the appropriate resources to the scene, Ford said.

Sonos made available a software upgrade Thursday that will allow users to add multiple accounts within a music service, find music more easily across sources through the search function, and boost the performance of the Sonos Playbar, the company said. It also added control from the lock screen for Android devices. Following the update, Sonos owners can associate up to 32 music service accounts with their systems, including multiple accounts for the same music service. Each Sonos controller can have a different default music service account for customized music, the company said. The upgrade to Playbar is said to deliver an improved soundstage and balance at any volume level.

Consumers said maintenance and predictive analytics on a vehicle’s health are the highest requirements for having a connected vehicle, a Compass Intelligence report found. The report released Wednesday said there's low interest in having entertainment DVD systems, Compass said in a news release. The target segment for this market, which is children under 10, is taking a hit because kids are increasingly using tablets for entertainment purposes, it said. “Overall products and services that can enhance the driving experience, entertainment and vehicle maintenance are the key wants from end-users.” Research for the report was done via an online survey of more than 1,320 persons, Compass said. More than half of users want a system that displays when preventative maintenance is due, and 60 percent want real-time traffic updates, it said.

An increase in safety features for driver monitoring is spurring demand for multifunction TFT-LCD panels used in the automotive instrument cluster, said a DisplaySearch report. Shipments of TFT-LCD panels for the instrument cluster are expected to grow 48 percent this year to 30.2 million units, rising to 50 million units in 2018, DisplaySearch said. Safety functions such as “emergency stop” and “active lane control,” once features “found only in science fiction,” are now becoming more commonplace, said Hiroshi Hayase, DisplaySearch vice president-small/medium displays. With fully automatic driving on the horizon, and with growing requirements for monitoring safety and other functions, TFT-LCD instrument clusters “could soon resemble glass cockpits,” Hayase said. Growing manufacturer demand for automotive TFT-LCD panels in the instrument cluster are led by the U.S., Europe, Japan and other developed nations, he said. In the first half of 2014, Europe's Continental was the top buyer of instrument cluster TFT-LC panels, followed by Ford and Nippon Seiki, Hayase said.

Gracenote launched a connected music solution for the automotive market linking terrestrial radio to online music services in an effort to create a common platform for music sources within a car’s head unit. The technology will be available for 2017 model year cars, Gracenote said in a news release. The multiple choices for music content in a car -- including AM/FM, CDs, satellite radio, Internet radio, subscription music services and music stored on a smartphone -- have created a disparate audio experience in vehicles, Gracenote said. The company’s goal is to offer a consistent user interface across all sources for metadata presented on a vehicle’s display. Gracenote’s solution, Entourage Radio, adds an intelligent layer that “helps identify what songs are being played and the source,” said Gracenote Chief Strategy Officer Ty Roberts. Gracenote Entourage is the underlying technology that enables continuous audio fingerprinting of songs for real-time music recognition, the company said. Being able to identify the audio source in real time enables Gracenote to deliver the correct song, artist and album information, “driver-relevant” cover art and station logos to the automotive display, it said. After a song is recognized, listeners can direct the head unit to play songs that are similar in genre, mood and era, to play additional songs from the artist or add to an existing playlist within a streaming music service, it said. For carmakers, Entourage Radio solves the challenge of fragmentation of entertainment services by market, Gracenote said. Music streaming services have varying levels of popularity and availability by market, and Gracenote’s large catalog of song IDs for streaming services gives carmakers the ability to link drivers to regional music services, the company said. An option within the platform is to use Gracenote’s Rhythm music discovery platform to enable “automatic playlisting” within a local library, it said.

CTIA stressed the importance of spectrum and getting net neutrality rules right in a blog post Wednesday, after AT&T, Ericsson, Here, Qualcomm, Sprint and Verizon demonstrated in-car wireless technologies at the FCC. “The connected car is only possible if there is more spectrum,” said Scott Bergmann, vice president-regulatory policy. “Since spectrum is a finite resource, we must make sure it’s put to its highest and best use.” On net neutrality rules, flexibility is critical, Bergmann said. “When it comes to the FCC’s Open Internet proceeding, it is vitally important that policymakers recognize that ‘wireless is different.’”