Renault is developing a service to connect its cars to smart home appliances

Last updated on April 8th, 2020 at 07:59 pm

Groupe Renault is developing a service that enables the interaction and communication between its cars and connected objects in smart homes. The French automaker is partnering up with another French-born company, Otodo, which pide themselves in smart-home connectivity and appliances.

The idea behind this new connectivity service is so that Renault customers can control various smart home appliances from their vehicle's dashboard and vice-versa, where they'll be able to prepare or share an itinerary from the home to their connected vehicle. This will allow drivers to automate a few mundane tasks and should speed up the process of getting in or out of a vehicle.

Jean-François Labal, Marketing & Partnership Head for Connected Cars & Services at Groupe Renault: “Cars need to blend into our digital lives. With this service, we’re offering our customers a trailblazing experience and a completely secure system to connect their home’s connected objects to their vehicle. The interface to set it up is very intuitive and it comes with two advantages: it’s automatic so it makes life simpler and it saves energy by switching lights and heating on and off as needed.”

The service will be maintained through a secured service, which shouldn't be easy to hack. To make the process easy and accessible for all, Renault will develop an app, which will integrate itself through the company's Easy Link platform. Available on the new Zoe, Clio and Captur, the service will allow users to select the objects within their homes that they want to include and assign tailored schedules to them all.

As a Renault customer, you'll be able to set a scenario when you leave the home, whereby it puts the home to ‘sleep'; for example, setting the thermostat to energy-saving mode, turning off the lights and closing the shutters. When arriving back home, these set devices will then wake up, knowing when you've pulled up on your driveway.

Read next: Autonomous Renault electric taxis begin public testing at Paris University

As with most smart home-centric apps, you'll be able to activate how and when the system automatically triggers itself; including how you'd like to receive notifications.

The French automaker chose to partner up with Otodo as the latter company has been developing a technology platform since 2016, which aims at remotely controlling a wide variety of home appliances across a multitude of countries. It's not just a localised solution; and rightfully so, as Renault's vehicles are sold across different territories.

Eric Denoyer, CEO at Otodo: “Our platform has enabled Groupe Renault to create a simple and universal link between smart cars and smart homes, that works across brands and technologies. Very soon, everyone will be able to use this platform to organise their daily life from their car.”

The announcement of the partnership took place at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which takes place in Las Vegas. To see what else was announced at CES this year, head over to this page.