Hyundai Motor America Inc. in Fountain Valley and Silicon Valley-based Smartcar Inc. will launch a pilot program early next year in Southern California to provide Hyundai car owners with on-demand services from various businesses, including mobile car washes, and grocery and fuel deliverers.
The user must link his or her Blue Link account with a service provider’s app before requesting the service, and the connection allows the provider’s app to unlock the vehicle. The owner will receive a completion notification after the job is done, which sets off a prompt that prohibits the service provider from accessing the car again.
Mountain View-based Smartcar provides the connected-car technology that links with Hyundai’s vehicle connectivity system.
“At this point, it’s predominantly a value-add,” Cason Grover, Hyundai’s senior group manager of vehicle technology and planning, told the Business Journal during a demo at the Los Angeles Auto Show, which ran through Dec. 10.
Glendale startup Washos, which provides on-demand mobile car washes and detailing throughout greater L.A., is one of the first companies approved for the pilot. The partnership was formed through Hyundai Cradle, formerly known as Hyundai Ventures, the automaker’s Silicon Valley investment arm.
Hyundai will run the pilot for three months, then conduct a customer survey and evaluation before expanding the service, according to Larry Perrault, senior manager of connected car marketing and planning for Blue Link.
“It’s taking full advantage of the connected vehicle infrastructure,” he said. “You don’t have to stop what you’re doing to go out and meet someone or let someone in. You don’t have to inconvenience yourself.”
The latest development underscores Hyundai’s push to introduce technology features to customers. The automaker was among the first to introduce smart-watch integration, voice assist through Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa, and owner manuals delivered through augmented reality.
Microsemi Buy
Aliso Viejo-based Microsemi Corp. has quickly wrapped up another acquisition.
The chipmaker finalized its $130 million buy of the timing device business of Vectron International just over a month after it was announced on Oct. 27.
New Hampshire-based Vectron, part of the Knowles Corp. in Itasca, Ill., specializes in designing and manufacturing frequency controls, sensors and hybrid technologies for telecommunications, data communications, frequency synthesizers, and timing, navigation, military, aerospace, medical and instrument systems.
Its products include oscillators, frequency translators, and clock and data-recovery devices.
“The demand for bandwidth is insatiable and it is timing that effectively delivers that bandwidth in next-generation communications applications,” Steve Litchfield, Microsemi’s executive vice president and chief strategy officer told the Business Journal in an email. “This is an excellent opportunity for Microsemi to grow scale, increase dollar content and drastically increase the profitability of this asset.”
Microsemi has said the purchase will boost profits immediately after the transaction’s close.
The company posted record sales of $1.8 billion in the 12 months through September—the end of its fiscal year—up 9.5% from a year earlier. Net income hit $176.3 million—also a record—and coming after a loss of $32.6 million the year before.
Microsemi enters 2018 as Orange County’s fourth-largest chipmaker with about 230 local workers.
Patent Settlement
Irvine-based networking equipment maker Lantronix Inc. has settled a patent infringement lawsuit filed against Jinan USR IOT Technology Ltd.
Under the deal, the Chinese company agreed to cease and desist the sale of alleged infringed products in the U.S.
The suit, filed in July in Santa Ana in U.S. District Court, alleged its SuperPort products infringed on Lantronix patents related to its family of XPort devices, which are designed to help businesses seamlessly and quickly build network connectivity into products.
As part of the settlement, Lantronix reserved the right to enforce its foreign patents in other countries. Lantronix XPort products are protected by patents in several international jurisdictions, including Europe, China, Japan, Hong Kong and Malaysia.
The company posted $10.6 million in sales in the September quarter, down 3% from the same period a year earlier, and a net loss of $641,000, compared to a loss of $104,000 a year earlier.
