If you have a smart home with a lot of Samsung SmartThings Energy-compatible devices, and a Tesla product, then in the next few months the way you operate is going to become much more streamlined.
Last week at CES 2024 Samsung and Tesla announced that they were partnering up to integrate some information from a person’s Tesla devices into the Samsung Smart Things app and vice versa.
In a statement, Chanwoo Park, EVP and Head of IoT Development Team of Device Platform Centre at Samsung Electronics said: “Tesla Energy’s customers can now manage and monitor the power status of their homes through SmartThings Energy and Samsung devices in addition to the Tesla app, ensuring more access and connectivity. This new collaboration is a key milestone for Samsung Electronics in making our solution more widely available beyond home appliances.”
What does the Samsung and Tesla partnership mean?
The primary benefit to users would be that they could now see the status of their Tesla Powerwall, Solar Inverter, Wall Connector charging and electric vehicles in the Samsung SmartThings Energy app, giving them a more accurate picture of their energy usage when combined with SmartThings devices.
Customers in eligible territories will also be able to sync Samsung SmartThings Energy with the Tesla app’s “Storm Watch”, which means that Tesla users will also get notifications about extreme weather events (like typhoons) on their SmartThings devices, including Samsung TVs. The announcement said that this would allow users to activate AI Energy Mode during power outages to better preserve the power in their Tesla Powerwall to last through the outage.
In the statement, Drew Baglino from Tesla said: “At Tesla we are excited to add capability to our products to interact with other intelligent devices and software in customers’ homes. We recently published FleetAPI, allowing developers to interact with Powerwall, Solar, and Wall Connector in addition to our vehicles. We are pleased that Samsung has chosen to be an early developer, given their leading position in consumer smart home technology. Customers will be able to view the status of their grid connectivity across multiple devices and intelligently control home loads to extend their Powerwall energy when off grid.”
The fruits of this partnership are expected to become available overseas in the second quarter of 2024. Future availability in Australia has yet to be confirmed.
Hyundai also getting involved
At the same time, Samsung also announced a partnership with Hyundai to expand the SmartThings platform to support compatible electric cars, including ones from Hyundai and Kia. This will also include some elements of the SmartThings Energy expansion that’s happening with Telsa (and also Hyundai), and also “Home-to-Car” and “Car-to-Home” services.
Some of the discussed integrations include setting the car’s climate control before getting behind the wheel and controlling the infotainment system from your phone. Vice versa, there are plans to enable smart home management via the car’s infotainment console too. Theoretically, you could set your home’s air conditioner to activate while driving home from work.
These two partnerships show that Samsung is trying to get more involved with smart cars and home energy use, as those are clearly two growth areas. Here in Australia, you can use compatible Samsung phones as a set of digital car keys with selected models.
