Kia Motors to develop second smartwatch

By Park Jin-hai

Kia Motors’ smartwatch

Kia Motors plans to develop a watch that can remotely open a car’s doors, start the engine and also switch on the air conditioning.

The wristwatch is an upgraded version of the K3 Watch the company unveiled earlier this month in its promotion of K3 sedans, marking the second anniversary of its launch.

“Customer response to the watch was better than we expected. Now we are preparing to develop the next K3 Watch,” said a company official.

With the watch, Kia became the first local automaker to roll out such a device.

The company expects to receive about 1,500 orders from customers who purchase K3 sedans this month.

As of Tuesday, 1,020 customers ordered the watches.

The company initially expected that about 30 percent of the total offered would be sold to customers.

Kia officials said that developing remote control watches for cars was not particularity challenging, since currently mobile applications can also start ignitions.

For instance, Hyundai and Kia use telematics services or wireless Internet for vehicles, called Blue Link and UVO. Using a UVO mobile application, Kia provide services like starting ignitions, turning on lamps and finding the location of cars.

“The biggest challenge for developing next generation remotes lies not in the technical side, but the economics side. Lowering the cost and making a budget watch is our priority,” added the official.

The time of the launch is not yet known.