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Kia's promised "four-door coupe" Cub concept... isn't

Kia appears to have pulled a quick one on the world with its Cub Concept. As it turns out, the machine isn't the four-door coupe they promised at all. Instead, the little showcar is a five-door hatch with suicide rear doors. That's certainly fine by our reckoning, but it isn't quite what we were expecting to see on display at the Seoul Motor Show. The concept was penned at the company's design studio in Seoul with direction from Peter Schreyer, and it gets its thrust from a 204-horsepower, 1.6-liter direct-injection four-cylinder engine. With 195 pound-feet of torque on hand, we suspect the Cub would have little trouble hustling down the road.
Indoors, the Cub serves up black leather seats with yellow accents as well as a new Driving Information System that uses a gesture camera to control various operations. Right now, there are apparently no plans to put the Cub into production anywhere in the world, but we wouldn't be surprised to see some of the hatchback's elements make their way to the show room floor.

Hyundai and Kia will offer AI assistants in 2019 cars

Hyundai and Kia both have reputations as early adopters of in-car tech, and that's truer than ever now that voice assistants are becoming a practical reality on the road. The Korean automakers have revealed that they plan to include AI assistants in their new cars starting from 2019, with every vehicle being "connected" by 2025. As Hyundai explained, they've been working with SoundHound to create an Intelligent Personal Agent (based on Houndify) that both makes proactive suggestions (such as reminding you of a meeting) and offers remote control of both your car and your home. This sounds a whole lot like what other voice assistants do, but the car brands are counting on support for "multiple-command recognition" as the ace up their sleeve. If you tell your car to check the weather and turn on the lights at the same time, it'll do both instead of scratching its head like so many other AI helpers. You won't have to wait until 2019 to see the technology in action. Hyundai will unveil Intelligent Personal Agent at CES 2018, and it'll test a "simplified" take on the Agent in hydrogen fuel cell cars slated to drive on South Korean roads throughout the year. It's hard to say if IPA will have an advantage over companies borrowing "off-the-shelf" AI like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, but it's more the ubiquity that will be important -- you won't have to buy a premium-priced model to treat your car like a smart home hub.Reporting by Jon Fingas for Engadget.Related Video: Image Credit: Hyundai Auto News CES Hyundai Kia Technology Emerging Technologies CES 2018

2020 Kia Soul earns highest Top Safety Pick + rating from IIHS

The completely redesigned 2020 Kia Soul has finally been crash tested by IIHS, and the results are quite good. The subcompact crossover earned the organization's highest rating of Top Safety Pick +, which topped the previous generation's plain Top Safety Pick rating. The main reason for the higher overall rating is because of an improved passenger-side small overlap crash test result. The new model is now rated "Good" rather than "Acceptable" for the previous model. The rest of the new Soul's crash test results also got the top "Good" rating. Performance in other IIHS test categories are about the same as they had been. The Soul gets the top "Superior" rating for forward collision prevention. The system could stop the car completely before a collision at speeds up to 25 mph. It should be noted that automatic emergency braking is only available as a standard feature on S, EX and GT-Line models. The system with pedestrian detection is only available as a standard feature on the turbocharged GT-Line. Headlight performance was rated "Good" for models with LED headlights, also helping give the Soul the Top Safety Pick + rating, but the halogen headlights that come with lower trim levels were rated as "Poor." The LATCH anchor points for child seats are continued to be rated "Acceptable" for ease of use and access.