Although it may come as a surprise to most North Americans, GM’s heavily advertised OnStar service is only recently going global. Just this week GM confirmed its first subscriber in China with the sale of a new Cadillac Seville SLS.
GM made a formal announcement to celebrate its global expansion, and said, “We are so pleased to have Mr. Lu Jianping as our first subscriber in China, and we welcome him to the OnStar family,” said OnStar President Walt Dorfstatter. “After years of industry-leading innovation and phenomenal growth, we are proud to provide safety, security and peace of mind across the globe.”
For GM’s Chinese operations Shanghai OnStar Telematics Co Ltd is responsible for providing the subscriber-based service, which comes with one free year of service with each new OnStar equipped GM vehicle. For the Chinese market GM says the service is available nationwide and so far has been launched in Mandarin Chinese.
OnStar provides 14 services in China, including automatic crash response, emergency services, vehicle diagnostics, stolen vehicle location, remote door unlock, turn-by-turn navigation and hands free calling – among others.
