How Bluelink's Connected Services make your rental journey easier

If you’re a returning customer of ours (welcome back!), you may have spotted some new recent additions to our fleet here at Intack Self Drive. Namely, our new electric hire vehicles – the Ford e-Transit, Citroen e-Berlingo Small Van Hire, and the Hyundai Ioniq Electric. Today, we’re taking a closer look at the Hyundai Ioniq, and some of the coolest new features it offers, all designed to make your journey easier.

1. Bluelink® Connected Car Services

Now, the first thing for us to emphasise is that this is far from an exhaustive list of all the new features the Ioniq has to offer – it’s just a quick highlight of some of our top favourites. And many of these standout features are centred on the Bluelink operating system.

Bluelink is primarily controlled through an app on your phone, and it’s designed to make your journey easier, safer, and more convenient in almost everything it does. One particularly handy feature that our customers enjoy is the ability to remotely prepare the Ioniq for the journey before you so much as open the driver’s side door. Through the app, you can check the vehicle’s charge level and plan your route, before sending that plan directly to the Ioniq’s on-board navigation systems. You can even preset the climate control in the cabin, so that it's warm enough in winter, and cool enough in summer.

2. Connected routing with a fully digital 12.25’’ cluster

Once you’re in the driver’s seat, you’re fully in control with the digital 12.25’’ cluster in the centre of the dashboard. Your driving routes are calculated on a powerful server inside the Bluelink cloud, so that you can always be sure of accurate traffic forecasting – particularly useful when you have a tight timescale to make a delivery, or you’re managing expectations for arrival. The system will calculate more precise times for arrival, and if you hit traffic or other obstacles, it’ll reliably give you the most efficient route recalculation.

You can also connect your phone to the Bluelink system, so that you can easily take and make calls while out on the roads. And most importantly of all, you can do this safely with the system’s voice-activated controls – so all it takes is the touch of a button, and a spoken command to take complete control of navigation, entertainment, and communication.

3. Charging station finder

As we covered recently, one of the top priorities of EV drivers tends to be centred on range. Don’t worry on that score – the Ioniq has you covered. The Bluelink system is capable of helping you identify fuel and charging stations along the route for your journey, so that you can make pit-stops if required, and build them into your journey in advance – so that you can enjoy all the benefits of electric vehicles without being caught off-guard when making cross-country trips.

4. Live Parking Services

The Live Parking capability of Bluelink is worth its weight in gold when you’re travelling to (or through) particularly built-up areas, like city centres (e.g. London, Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol), where it can often be notoriously difficult to find spaces to park. The Ioniq’s on-board systemenables you to find and compare real-time parking locations close to where you need to go, identifying available spaces in any nearby garages, public car parks, and on-street parking. Any full locations will be marked as red on your map, helping you to narrow down available spaces – and barring any last-minute manoeuvres from fellow drivers, you can be sure that they’ll be free when you arrive.

5. Generous cargo space

While the Ioniq’s cargo space may not be quite as expansive as those of the Ford e-Transit or the Citroen e-Berlingo, it’s still highly generous for a car of its size, and encompasses both front and rear cargo spaces. So if you’ve got a moderate amount of cargo you need to ferry between locations, you can count on the Ioniq to help you get the job done – and offer you a pleasant and highly enjoyable journey on the way, too.

As we’ve touched on above, this is far from an exhaustive list of the Ioniq’s specifications, so if you’ve got any further questions about it, you can always feel free to check out its hire page on our website – or alternatively, just ask one of our team here at Intack!

With over 50 years of van, car and minibus hire experience, our fleet now spans over 450 cars, vans, and minibuses – so if you’re a business user looking for vehicles to meet your company requirements, or just a private customer looking for a personal vehicle for short-term use, you can count on us to have exactly the right vehicle at exactly the right price. Feel free to give us a call on 01254 57811, and we’ll be happy to help however we can!