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Hyundai sketches out HND-9 luxury sports coupe concept ahead of Seoul

Hyundai has dropped a couple of rendered looks at its forthcoming HND-9 luxury sports coupe concept, which will debut at the 2013 Seoul Motor Show. While full details probably won't be released until then, the Korean automaker has said the butterfly-doored machine will bow with a direct-injection, turbocharged 3.3-liter V6 engine good for around 365 horsepower. The mill is bolted to an eight-speed automatic transmission and puts its grunt to the rear tires. While the doors are pure showcar theater, we dig the Aston-inspired long nose and boisterous rear haunches.
Look for the car to receive an actual introduction on March 28, and while we don't expect to see the HND-9 on showroom floors any time soon, some of the creation's design language may make it to production models. Check out the full press release below.

2019 Hyundai Santa Fe can be unlocked and started with a fingerprint

Hyundai has unveiled a system that lets drivers unlock and start a vehicle using their fingerprints. The tech is built into the door handle and ignition button of the new 2019 Santa Fe SUV, showcased at an auto show in China last week. Multiple owners will be able to register their encrypted fingerprint data for the same vehicle, according to the South Korean automaker. And, depending on the person, the car will then automatically adjust seat positions and the angle of the rearview mirrors. A future update could also allow the biometric system to add personalized temperature, humidity, and steering settings, Hyundai said. For now, the company is planing to limit the feature to China upon its launch in the first quarter of 2019. The original report on the feature in the Korea Herald says users can unlock or start the car "without keys," but it's unclear whether that means it can be used in complete absence of the car's key fob. Related: In China, your car could be spying on you for the government The fingerprint sensor uses human capacitance to pull off the trick, differentiating between the electricity levels in different parts of the finger to prevent hacking or faked fingerprints. Hyundai said the system — which receives your encrypted fingerprint data from the touch sensor in the handle before unlocking the car — has an error rate of 1 in 50,000. (That's the same figure touted by Apple for its Touch ID tech for iPhones, iPads and select MacBooks.) The Santa Fe's other tech includes a rear occupant alert system, which uses ultrasonic sensors to detect the movements of children in the back to avoid anyone being left behind. The car also comes equipped with Chinese internet giant Baidu's voice recognition system and a wireless phone charger. This isn't the first time fingerprints have been used to start cars, but the unlocking tech has never before been baked in to a vehicle's door handle. Tesla Model 3 owners are also already using their smartphone as a car key while the rest of the industry (including Hyundai) is busy building a virtual smartphone key standard that could popularize the tech. Elsewhere, Hertz recently brought biometric data to car rentals at Atlanta International Airport.By Saqib Shah for Engadget.Related Video:

Kia, Hyundai testing big crossovers, and one looks like the Telluride

Big things are coming from Hyundai and Kia in the near future, and we mean literally. One of our spy photographers caught the companies each testing full-size crossover SUVs out in the snow. The Kia caught our attention in particular, because it looks quite a bit like the Kia Telluride concept from 2016. At the front of the Kia, the entire fascia looks boxy with nary a curve in sight. It also has low-set, squared-off headlights at the far edges; both prominent features on the concept, too. That theme carries over to the back, where the metal portion of the hatch looks plain and flat and is almost perfectly vertical. The glass area leans forward a bit. The taillights also look like those on the concept, with thin vertical portions that make a 90-degree turn inward at the top. A neat design touch not found on the concept are the slight glass extensions into the roof on each side of the windshield. When the concept Telluride was revealed, it was based on the Sorento platform and had a combined 400 horsepower. This power came from a 270-horsepower V6 and a 130-horsepower electric motor, which Kia claimed would provide 30 mpg in all-wheel-drive form. We expect that the Telluride will mainly be offered in non-hybrid forms, and perhaps in diesel form, since this prototype was testing alongside a Volvo XC90 diesel. But we also wouldn't necessarily rule out a hybrid variant like the concept. Kia and Hyundai both are getting serious about hybrids and electrification, and if Kia is targeting something like the XC90, which itself offers a hybrid powertrain, it would make sense that Kia is planning to offer a competing product. A Kia executive said news about the production model is coming "soon," so we'll probably learn more about the production Telluride sometime this year, probably no earlier than the New York Auto Show. View 16 Photos As for the big Hyundai, it will likely take the space the newly downsized Santa Fe has vacated. We're not sure what it might be called, but the last time Hyundai had a crossover bigger than the Santa Fe, it was called the Veracruz, so the name could make a return. Styling-wise, the front of this full-size crossover is right in line with the rest of Hyundai's new-generation crossovers. It has the split headlight design that first showed up on the Kona, with the lower lamps providing primary illumination, and the thin, scowling upper lamps working mainly as daytime running lights.