Hyundai Home Will Bundle EV Charger, Solar, Home Battery
All wrapped up in one convenient payment.
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Hyundai has revealed the first details of its upcoming concierge service, Hyundai Home, which will help EV buyers get a home charger, solar panels, and even home battery system installed and rolled into one convenient payment.
Launching in early 2022, Hyundai Home will be a one-stop shop for charging your new Hyundai Ioniq 5 EV and future Ioniq vehicles at home. Working with as-yet undisclosed partners, a Hyundai Home concierge will go over your charging needs and your budget and create a customized bundle. It can be as simple as getting a wall-mounted Level 2 charger installed at your house, or involved as an entire package including rooftop solar panels and a storage battery that can be used at night or during blackouts.
Each buyer will get an assigned concierge who works with them through the entire process, no matter how simple or complex. Use Hyundai Home's financial service and you can bundle your car payment with the cost of the charger, solar panels, and home battery so you make one payment every month.
Key details are still being worked out, including how your billing will change if you choose to sell your car, your house, or both before you've paid everything off. Hyundai has not said yet if the solar panels will be sold outright or as part of a long-term lease, or both. Leasing is far more common today as it brings down the monthly payment significantly.
The company is promising more details about its Hyundai Home service as it gets closer to launch, but for an EV buyer with the budget to go all-in, it's a promising new idea in the effort to smooth the transition to EVs and renewable energy.
Were you one of those kids who taught themselves to identify cars at night by their headlights and taillights? I was. I was also one of those kids with a huge box of Hot Wheels and impressive collection of home-made Lego hot rods. I asked my parents for a Power Wheels Porsche 911 for Christmas for years, though the best I got was a pedal-powered tractor. I drove the wheels off it. I used to tell my friends I’d own a “slug bug” one day. When I was 15, my dad told me he would get me a car on the condition that I had to maintain it. He came back with a rough-around-the-edges 1967 Volkswagen Beetle he’d picked up for something like $600. I drove the wheels off that thing, too, even though it was only slightly faster than the tractor. When I got tired of chasing electrical gremlins (none of which were related to my bitchin’ self-installed stereo, thank you very much), I thought I’d move on to something more sensible. I bought a 1986 Pontiac Fiero GT and got my first speeding ticket in that car during the test drive. Not my first-ever ticket, mind you. That came behind the wheel of a Geo Metro hatchback I delivered pizza in during high school. I never planned to have this job. I was actually an aerospace engineering major in college, but calculus and I had a bad breakup. Considering how much better my English grades were than my calculus grades, I decided to stick to my strengths and write instead. When I made the switch, people kept asking me what I wanted to do with my life. I told them I’d like to write for a car magazine someday, not expecting it to actually happen. I figured I’d be in newspapers, maybe a magazine if I was lucky. Then this happened, which was slightly awkward because I grew up reading Car & Driver, but convenient since I don’t live in Michigan. Now I just try to make it through the day without adding any more names to the list of people who want to kill me and take my job.
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