What's the news?
Kia has announced a new sub-brand called 'Drive Wise' at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, which will cover all of the advanced technologies the manufacturer requires to bring its first fully autonomous vehicle to market by 2030.
We won't have to wait 14 years to see the fruits of this labour, though, as some of these systems will make it into Kia's vehicles by 2020, as semi-autonomous Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS).
On show at the CES were: Highway Autonomous Driving (HAD), which uses radar and cameras to drive a Kia along a motorway; Urban Autonomous Driving (UAD), utilising GPS, sensors and live traffic updates to allow the car to negotiate busy city streets; Preceding Vehicle Following (PVF), an enhanced lane-keeping system that allows the Kia to follow the car in front if lane markings are indecipherable; Emergency Stop System (ESS) with Driver Status Monitoring (DSM), which keeps an eye on the driver - and if they take their eyes off the road for too long, the car pulls safely into a side lane and comes to a halt; Traffic Jam Assist (TJA), which once again uses the car in front as a marker during start-stop traffic; and Autonomous Valet Parking (strangely, no abbreviated to AVP by Kia), allowing drivers to park the vehicle remotely, using a smart key or smartwatch.
All of Kia's Drive Wise technologies will be supplemented by a new Human Machine Interface (HMI) in the cars, which will feature gesture control, fingerprint sensors and smart-device connectivity. The key to Kia getting a fully autonomous, Drive Wise model on the roads by 2030 will be the development and integration of vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications.
Anything else?
How about a world where you can paraglide down a hill, sending your Kia Sorento from top to bottom without a driver while you enjoy your extreme sporting pursuit? Or perhaps you're just shopping, and you want your Soul to autonomously leave its parking bay and come and pick you up? Maybe you're a photographer, who needs the car to drive while you take a cracking snapshot...
All sound a bit far-fetched? Well, Kia reckons Drive Wise can deliver these sorts of things. So take a look at this short video to see what we - and the Korean manufacturer - mean.
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