2014 Hyundai Veloster Turbo on 2040-cars

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Hyundai's Super Bowl ads score on Ad Meter

Pepsi and Anheuser-Busch have often dominated USA Today's influential Super Bowl Ad Meter, but this year Hyundai broke through as the first car company to capture the top spot. Hyundai's First Date spot shown during the first quarter earned a 6.90 rating to edge out Heinz's Weiner Stampede (6.63) and two Doritos' commercials, Utrasound (6.60) and Doritos Dogs (6.48). Two more Hyundai spots, Ryanville (6.27) and The Chase (6.19) gave the automaker three of the top six commercials during the Super Bowl. USA Today's Ad Meter has been a barometer that measures the success of ads during the Big Game since 1989. More than 19,000 panelists participated this year. They ranked each ad on a scale from zero to 10. Anheuser-Busch ads won the last three years. First Date stars comedian Kevin Hart as an overprotective dad in who uses Hyundai's Blue Link car finder feature in the Genesis to spy on his daughter during a first date. Ryanville showcases Ryan Reynolds to illustrate how the Elantra can help with the perils of distracted driving. The Chase also stars the Elantra and its Blue Link voice-activated auto start system, which are successfully used to evade bears. Related Video: Hyundai Dominates with Three of the Top Six Ads First Automaker to Take the USA TODAY Ad Meter Crown FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif., Feb. 8, 2016 – Hyundai became the first automotive company to win USA TODAY's coveted Ad Meter when its spot "First Date" beat out 63 other Super Bowl 50 commercials. Hyundai's impressive performance also included a fifth and sixth place finish for "Ryanville" and "The Chase" respectively, meaning Hyundai finished with three of the top six highest rated ads. Creative was developed by Hyundai's agency of record, INNOCEAN Worldwide. "On the biggest advertising day of the year, we wanted to entertain Super Bowl fans with creative storytelling and relevant, popular celebrities, while showcasing the innovative technology features of our vehicles. Our formula clearly resonated with the thousands of Ad Meter voters," said Dean Evans, chief marketing officer, Hyundai Motor America. "Kevin Hart's comedic chops coupled with a human truth people could connect with was a standout combination that put us over the top. It's an incredible conclusion to our first year as an official NFL sponsor that we won the Ad Meter for Super Bowl 50." "First Date," a 60-second spot featuring Kevin Hart, highlights one of the incredible technology features of Hyundai's premium Genesis sedan.

Hyundai offers three free years of Blue Link safety tech [w/videos]

As of now, the Assurance Connected Care service that Hyundai introduced at the New York Auto Show with the 2014 Genesis sedan is complimentary for three years on any vehicle equipped with the company's Blue Link telematic systems. It's the third service package to join the Blue Link suite, after Essentials and Guidance.
Assurance Connected Car provides owners with monthly vehicle reports, maintenance alerts, notification of diagnostic trouble codes and safety features like SOS emergency assistance and automatic collision notification sent to Blue Link agents. The service can also be transferred to new owners within the three-year timeframe. Owners who already have Blue Link can add Assurance Connected Care "at a reduced price," but Hyundai hasn't said what that price is yet.
There's a press release below with more details and four commercials to show you just what you could be missing out on.

We get our hands on Android Auto [w/video]

After a week with version one of Android Auto in a 2015 Hyundai Sonata, my opinion is that it fulfills the promise of the technology. I couldn't even exploit it fully because I'm not married to the Android ecosystem. At my desk right now there's a PC in front of me, an iPad on my left, and an Android phone on my right. My Android phone is, in fact, so old that it's not compatible with Android Auto. So in addition to a Sonata, Hyundai let me borrow a Nexus 5 smartphone and a Motorola Moto360 watch. Yet even with all that gear, which, in practical terms is someone else's borrowed digital life, Android Auto still showed itself to be tech worth having. When you start the Sonata you get the standard Hyundai infotainment screen. Plug your phone in, and you'll get an option to click over to Android Auto. At that point, you lose the ability to use your phone, which is the purpose of the system, to keep you from using the handset. Since the contents of your phone are ported to the head unit, there is hardly any reason to reach for the portable device anyway. The Google Now screen comes up first, populated with a series of notifications resulting from Google having learned your life and kept track of where you've been going, who you've been calling, and what you've been searching for. After only two days, Google Now understood that I probably lived in Venice, CA, and not in Orange County, where the phone had previously resided. No matter the make of car, the interface is the same. The icons along the bottom of the screen indicate Navigation, Phone, Home (Google Now), Audio, and Return – to go back to the car's native interface. The first four options represent much of what we use our phones for (we'll get to texting in a second), and that's what buyers want: for cars to work seamlessly with their phones. Oh, and to have voice recognition actually be useful. Android Auto works with the Hyundai system, so if music is playing when you turn the car on, it will continue to play even though you're in Android Auto, and you can control it through that interface. Switching to media or apps on your phone is as easy as saying, "Play music," which defaults to Google Play, or pressing the audio button and choosing an app like JoyRide or NPR One. You do have to figure out how to speak to the system. I couldn't find any list of Android Auto-specific voice commands, so sometimes it would take a few tries to figure out how Google liked to be ordered around.