Even if is just being launched in Europe, OnStar service is available for a long time in the United States on most of General Motor cars. The popular service has now reached more than 1 billion requests from customers, who interact by phone, mobile app or embedded cellular service in their cars and trucks.
 
It is an impressive milestone, considering the system was launched 19 years ago as an industry-first service that would place a call from the vehicle when an air bag deployed. Now, in this stage, its functions are much more complex: OnStar remotely unlocks doors, loads driving directions directly to the vehicle, compiles and sends emails on vehicle health. A customer contacts OnStar every two seconds. That adds up to about 5 million calls a month from its subscriber base of more than 7 million. Add 8.8 million interactions a month from the mobile app.
 
Before becoming known as OnStar, the original name for the service was Project Beacon. Its goal was integrating wireless communication into vehicles, years before mass adoption of smartphones.
 
In the fall of 1996, OnStar debuted in the Cadillac DeVille, Seville and Eldorado. The service initially offered Airbag Deployment Notifications, the core of OnStar’s safety and security premise, which progressed into Automatic Crash Response that uses sensors capable of determining the severity of a crash impact and alerting an OnStar emergency advisor to assist. OnStar today responds to more than 100,000 emergency calls every month.
 
The Vauxhall OnStar connectivity and service assistant will be launched in Europe on August 3, 2015.